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OF ILLINOIS 
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The Grub Street DC ights 


Entertainments 
J. C.. SQUIRE 


By J. C. SQUIRE 


POEMS 


POEMS: FIRST SERIES 
A Collection of Poems written 1905-1918 


POEMS: SECOND SERIES 
A Collection of Poems written 1918-1921 


THE BirpDs AND OTHER POEMS 
Poems written 1918-1919 


THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 
THE Moon 
AMERICAN POEMS AND OTHERS 


ESSAYS 
Essays AT LARGE 
Books REVIEWED 


THE GOLD TREE AND OTHER STUDIES 
Limited Autographed Edition 


LIFE AND LETTERS 


Books IN GENERAL: FIRST SERIES 
By Solomon Eagle 


Books IN GENERAL: SECOND SERIES 
Books IN GENERAL: THIRD SERIES 


FICTION 
THE GRUB STREET NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS 


PARODIES 
COLLECTED PARODIES 
‘TRICKS OF THE TRADE 


THE COLLECTED PormMs OF JAMES ELROY FLECKER: 
Edited, with an Introduction 


SELECTIONS FROM MODERN POETS 


The 
Grub Street Lights 


L.ntertatnments 
by 


J. C. Sguire 





tN EY ORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


Copyright, 1924, 
By George H. Doran Company 


oD 


THE GRUB STREET NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS 


— Be 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 









ee aii Ati 
Wet r ae | 





To 
LADY EILEEN ORDE | 


‘WHO FIRED THE PIST OL AT THE START 





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as 


4 
i 





NOTE 


Some of these stories appeared in 
The London Mercury, whose editor has 
no option; others in The Century, The 
Windsor, and The Illustrated Review, 
whose editors are thanked. 

Pos 


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SUA A aie 
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Lhe 


III: 


IV: 


WEL 


Vit. 


VIII: 


IX: 


CONTENTS 


: THE MAN WHO KEPT A DIARY 


THE BEST SELLER 

THE SUCCESS 

THE GOLDEN SCILENS 
BAXTERIANA 

THE LECTURE 

THE CEMETERY 

THE PAINFUL DILEMMA 


THE MAN WHO WROTE FREE 
VERSE 


PAGE 


13 
38 
72 
114 
136 
P59 
184 
215 


259 





THE GRUB STREET NIGHTS 
ENTERTAINMENTS 





THE GRUB STREET 
NIGHTS ENTER- 
TAINMENTS 


I: THE MAN WHO KEPT A DIARY 
I 


R. WILLIAM WIGGLESWORTH 

was a bachelor. He had greying hair, 
a bald spot, a small moustache, cham- 
bers in Gray’s Inn, and a respectable, but 
not a bloated, income. His only near rela- 
tive was his niece Mary, who was engaged 
in social work. Now it was nursing, now it 
was education, now it was the promotion 


of international harmony: she had poorly . 


paid jobs in connection with all these suc- 
cessively, and she more than earned her pay, 
for her ability was considerable and her dis- 
interested idealism even more notable still. 
They often talked of Society and the duties 
of its members. “Well, Uncle,” Mary 
would say, “no doubt you are very kind in 
your own circle. You help your char- 
13 


14 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


woman’s family, you have helped me, I 
have sometimes persuaded you to subscribe, 
and you give handsome Christmas boxes to 
the porter at the gate. But you really do 
not justify your existence.” 

“My existence?’ Mr. Wigglesworth 
would murmur in reply. “Can I really be 
of importance to any one? I am a very 
humble person really. I merely want to go 
on my quiet way. I am unfitted at this 
stage to earn my living. I know nothing 
whatever about politics; besides which no- 
body in politics would ever take me seri- 
ously. JI make what you would consider a 
good use of the margin of my small income; 
my pleasures, which consist of reading a 
little and observing the world a little, are 
surely harmless. I beg you do not attempt 
to convert me into something other than I 
am.” 

“Oh, Uncle, you are hopeless,’ Mary 
would reply; and, with a sigh, she would 
resign herself to enjoying the admirable 
luncheon that he had provided for her. The 
sherry and the claret she often forgot to 
commend; but, idealist though she was, she 
never attempted to conceal her liking for 
the lobster, of which she always secured the 
major share. After luncheon, with her cof- 
fee-cup in her hand, she would walk round 
the room looking a little enviously at his 


The Man Who Kept a Diary 15 


books, which were numerous and well 
bound. She knew so little about them and 
she wished she had time to know more. 
Yet at the end, in spite of all their mutual 
affection, she always went away wondering 
whether this selfish bachelor existence ought 
to be tolerated. Was not such epicureanism 
the canker which destroyed empires? Was 
not Mr. Wigglesworth, however modest and 
conventionally virtuous, one of those drones 
in the hive whose parasitical presence makes 
the workers so justly angry? She would 
sometimes discuss him with her more inti- 
mate friends. “I know,” she would say, 
“that it’s hopeless to expect him to go into 
the House. But if only he would serve on 
committees, or become honorary secretary of 
the Lifeboats or the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ 
Families, it would be better than nothing.”’ 
“But how on earth, my dear,” the friend 
would reply, “does he spend his time?” 
“Oh,” she would reply, “fritters it away 
somehow. He goes to his Club, and he goes 
to private views, and he sometimes goes out 
to tea, and he sometimes gets asked to a 
City dinner. I believe he knows all the 
booksellers and picture dealers, and old 
friends ask him away for week-ends. And 
sometimes he gives men’s dinners in his 
chambers. Most of the men he asks are 
lawyers. In the morning he reads The 


16 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


Times and sticks in bookplates and throws 
out crumbs for the pigeons.” 

“What a life!” 

“Yes, what a life!” 


II 


For the ninety-ninth time Mary had been 
tackling her uncle about his lack of occupa- 
tion. He had, she thought, been more than 
usually annoying about it to-day. On pre- 
vious occasions he had at least had the grace 
to be embarrassed by her reproaches and to 
try perpetually to change the subject. How 
well she knew those artless stratagems, the 
questions about her work, the comments on 
the morning’s news, the solicitudes about her 
health, the remarks about letters which he 
had received from distant cousins in Aus- 
tralia, the sudden decisions, even, that there 
was something wrong with the wine and 
that a fresh bottle must be obtained. ‘‘No, 
my dear Mary, let me get you another glass; 
I simply cannot allow you to drink that.” 
‘To-day there had been an odd difference in 
the atmosphere, no evasions, no shamefaced 
excuses. Almost always in the past, though 
his appalling inner stubbornness and inertia 
had beaten her on the major issue, she had 
at least reduced his arguments to pulp. He 
had hardly even attempted to argue, only to 


The Man Who Kept a Diary 17 


beg immunity from too severe a condemna- 
tion. To-day he had assumed another and 
a very exasperating attitude; it was for all 
the world as though he had just parted from 
some bold, conscienceless, even misogynist, 
ally in the background, who had braced him 
to fight for his evil cause. To-day there had 
been none of those rather pathetic silences 
under rebuke, when care settled on Mr. 
Wigglesworth’s forehead and his heavily- 
lidded eyes looked sadly out of the window 
in search of the relief which he knew would 
not be forthcoming. There was a new con- 
fidence in his bearing, something almost of 
boisterousness. Her most direct assaults 
were met not merely with equanimity but 
with jocularity. His eyes looked straight 
at her and they positively glittered with 
amusement. When she attacked he almost 
seemed inclined to counter-attack; he even 
chaffed her. No captain of industry or at- 
torney could have worn a more assumed air, 
no successful sailor could have been more 
buoyant. ‘“Was he drunk?” she asked her- 
self for one awkward moment; but no, he 
was not drunk. Yet he could not have been 
more unlike himself had he been at the 
crisis of a desperate bout. 

“Occupation,” he said, “there are all sorts 
of occupations. I don’t wish to criticise 
your mode of life, but I must ask you to 


18 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


suspend judgment about mine. I fully 
agree that my pursuits are not obviously 
utilitarian, but you really must take it from 
me that there may be more in them than 
meets the eye.” 

“Tt’s all very well, Uncle William,” she 
replied, “but I’m not going on my own 
opinion, though I should have thought that 
the way in which you waste your time was 
perfectly obvious, and I confess that until 
now [ always thought you admitted it your- 
self. It isn’t only me; everybody I know 
who knows you thinks it too dreadful that 
you haven’t got any aim in life except just 
amusing yourself. I know you're not selfish 
at the bottom, but it does look like it, 
doesn’t it?” 

Mr. Wigglesworth bit his lip and hesi- 
tated a little, while Mary recollected, in a 
flash, all the occasions on which she had 
tried to whitewash her uncle. “I know he’s 
rather weak, but he’s most awfully kind, 
really. He’s too modest; he doesn’t think 
himself capable of really useful work; and 
it’s so difficult to change old habits, isn’t 
it, especially for a bachelor living by him- 
self.” | 

Had she been mistaken? had the mask of 
diffidence and frailty at last fallen from a 
nature which, in truth, had always been 
hard and wilful? She rose, unhappily, as 


The Man Who Kept a Diary 19 


soon as the meal was over. ‘I’m very sorry, 
Uncle William,” she said in a slightly 
strained voice, with her gaze averted, ‘I’ve 
got an appointment and I shan’t be able to 
wait for coffee.” 

“Look here, Mary,” he said, with sudden 
decision, taking the door handle from her 
and waving her to the comfortable window 
seat, “you simply must stay for a few 
minutes.” 

Still a shade sulky she half attempted to 
renew her protestations, but he would have 
none of them, and her chagrin was displaced 
by curiosity when he added, with a very 
earnest air, “ve found it very difficult to 
tell you, but I can’t bear that you should 
misunderstand any longer. I am not so idle 
as you think.” She was baffled and bewil- 
dered: images crowded on her confusedly: 
secret service, a midnight concentration on 
the ologies. He was smiling blandly at her. 
‘As a matter of fact,” he said, “I am keep- 
ing a diary.” : 

“What,” she exclaimed, as though he had 
said he was keeping a spaniel, “I can’t see 
that there’s anything remarkable about that. 
I keep one myself.” 

“Yes, Mary,” he went on, “but mine may 
be a little different.’ Mr. Wigglesworth 
was always an exact man with a dislike for 
overstatement, so he left it at that. | 


20 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


“Oh,” said Mary, rather mystified. 

“Yes,”’ added her uncle with a slightly 
conspiratorial air, “but I’d rather, if you 
don’t mind, that you kept it a secret.” 

When she reached the Bureau of Psycho- 
Technical Research she at once went to the 
room of her friend Agatha Bonner and told 
her all about it. A passion for social re- 
construction does not always imply a gen- 
eral education, but Agatha Bonner was un- 
usually well read. She took in the situation 
at once. “I don’t know your Uncle, Mary,” 
she observed, “but I take it he is hardly 
likely to be a Marie Bashkirtseff. You are 
probably the niece of a modern classic. It’s 
rather thrilling, Mary; it may be a great 
historical document.” 

“Well I never,” said Mary, ‘‘the old fox.” 
But the cordiality of their relations was sub- 
sequently uninterrupted. 


III 


It is one thing to talk about a man behind 
his back and another to talk to him to his 
face. Many months elapsed before anybody 
directly mentioned his clandestine activities 
to Mr. Wigglesworth, and then it was a 
total stranger, a large lady with a treble 
chin whom he had taken down to dinner in 
a young Jewish politician’s house in Bays- 


The Man Who Kept a Diary 21 


water. During the soup she looked at him 
coyly, and in a winning whisper said to 
him: “Oh, dear Mr. Wigglesworth, I would 
give anything for a glance at your famous 
Diary.” 

Our friend smiled, urbanely yet modestly, 
and observed: “Honestly, I don’t think 
you'd find it very interesting. People ex- 
aggerate so absurdly”; and then hastened to 
turn the conversation to Mr. Epstein’s latest 
exhibition. The lady was pertinacious, and 
several times during the meal showed an 
inclination to return to the theme, but Mr. 
Wigglesworth successfully fenced her off 
without direct rudeness, and even managed 
to avoid conceding her an invitation to see 
his charming collection of pictures in his 
delightful chambers about which she had 
heard so much. This encounter, had it 
been reached without preliminary warnings, 
might have startled Mr. Wigglesworth. In 
the old days indeed it would have been a 
matter of great surprise to him had any 
stranger at all disclosed, not merely interest 
in, but bare knowledge of his previous ex- 
istence. He had walked quietly on the out- 
skirts of the pulsing world and had grown 
accustomed to pass unnoticed. But during 
these last months the community had shown 
increasing symptoms of a new attitude to- 
wards him. Several college friends, who 


22 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


for years had forgotten him in the pursuit 
of their promising careers, had sent him in- 
vitations to stay in the country. He had 
gone; he had found himself included in 
carefully chosen and entirely enjoyable par- 
ties; more than this, diffident though he was, 
he had been unable to avoid feeling that 
he had held his own with the wittiest and 
the most important. The days had appar- 
ently passed when, except his few intimates, 
nobody asked him anywhere except to fill 
an odd chair, and when, in a crowd, he had 
been accustomed to find his partner, after 
a few perfunctory words to him, addressing 
herself to her other neighbour. And he con- 
fessed frankly to himself that he liked the 
change; it was agreeable to find people 
laughing in chorus at his little jokes, to be 
engaged, as equal with equal, in earnest dis- 
cussions by people at the centre of affairs, 
to be consulted as to his wishes, and to be 
persuaded into joining all the most pleasant 
excursions. His town life, meanwhile, had 
suffered a similar gradual transformation. 
Cards had begun to pour in on him from 
everybody he had ever met, and from some 
enterprising hostesses whom he had never 
met at all. Wherever he was asked, there 
he went; it was a congenial change to have 
a status in the world; he was beginning to 
talk very well, and he was always the cause 


The Man Who Kept a Diary 23 


of good talk in others. It was especially 
stimulating to find so many people anxious 
to discover what his opinions were concern- 
ing art, letters and politics; they seemed so 
often to wish to agree with him. Materially 
he was also prospering. At the second large 
political reception to which he had gone a 
Cabinet Minister edged him aside into a 
corner and, after putting very strongly his 
own side in a very complicated dispute then 
raging behind the scenes, gave him a finan- 
cial tip on which he told him he could safely 
put his shirt. This Mr. Wigglesworth did; 
with the result that he found no difficulty 
at all in producing the large entrance fees ° 
and annual subscriptions of the three excel- 
lent clubs which he had recently been per- 
suaded to join. In a thousand and one ways 
Mr. Wigglesworth had perceived the indi- 
cations of a growing interest and prestige; 
as we have seen, therefore, it was no shock 
to him when point-blank he was informed 
that his carefully-guarded secret was out. 
He did not even seem to mind. 


IV 


Barely two seasons had passed since all 
London that counts had grown familiar with 
the notion of Mr. Wigglesworth as chroni- 
cler-in-chief to his time before an ever-vigi- 


24 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


lant Press became aware of him. The first 
paragraph which came to Mr. Wiggles- 
worth’s eyes was a scanty one, but signifi- 
cant in that nobody else under the rank 
of a countess was mentioned in it. It ap- 
peared in a column signed “Yvonne,” and 
ran: 


Amongst the well-known people seen at 
the Canine Waifs and Strays’ Thée-Dan- 
sant yesterday were Prince Hippos of 
Greece, the Grand Duke Justinian, Lord 
Ramsgate, Lady Clackmannan and her 
two charming children Bertie and Gertie, 
and Mr. Herbert Wigglesworth, who 
watched with interest but did not dance. 
On dit, by the way, that when Mr. Wig- 
glesworth’s Diary appears the dovecotes 
are likely to be fluttered. 


Only a few days elapsed, however, before 
a further and more elaborate reference was 
made, this time by a male causeur. 


Yesterday, at an exclusive club, I lis- 
tened to a fascinating conversation in 
which two statesmen of European repu- 
tation and a famous admiral took part. 
The subject was diaries and the possibil- 
ity of our own eventful time providing 
posterity with a diarist of the standing 


The Man Who Kept a Diary 25 


and value of Pepys or Greville. The 
opinion was unanimous that a record of 
the kind was likeliest to come from the 
pen of Mr. Augustus Wigglesworth... Mr. 
Wigglesworth, who is one of the best 
known and busiest of men about town, 
goes everywhere and sees everybody. For 
years he has kept a full day to day record, 
and a duchess told me the other day that 
Mr. Wigglesworth had been the repos- 
itory of more secrets than even the late 
Sir George Lewis. 


This became the stock form of all subse- 
quent allusions, and they need not detain us 
further. It was natural that after the mat- 
ter had been openly referred to in print, 
Mr. Wigglesworth should on occasion find 
people bold enough to refer to it in his pres- 
ence. Yet these were comparatively few. 
Now and then a brazen lady would beg for 
a glimpse of the diary. Once, on a wet 
Sunday morning in the country, his hostess 
blandly suggested that the company should 
come upstairs to her room and Mr. Wiggles- 
worth should read them a few innocuous 
extracts: “Do; only quite old ones about 
people who are all dead.” Our hero evaded 
the request easily, he carried no diary about 
with him. 

“What about the entries you made last 


26 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


night?” cried one of the sprightlier of the 
younger ladies; whilst the Solicitor-General, 
who had that evening engaged Mr. Wiggles- 
worth in an earnest conversation, gave an 
involuntary stare of consternation. 

“There were none,” said Mr. Wiggles- 
worth; and, as a concession, bestowed on 
them a number of reminiscences which were 
very dull although entirely truthful. 

The one place where frequent reference to 
his habits was made was in the smoking-room 
of the liveliest and latest of his clubs. 
There he lived on terms of affectionate es- 
teem with a number of subalterns whose 
sense of humour was crude. They would 
banter each other at tea-time; and when one 
of them had made a remark of more than 
ordinary obscenity, another would say: 
“‘Mind you put that in your diary, Wiggles- 
worth”; at which the whole assembly would 
burst into a loud guffaw. 

“A busy man,” they said in the para- 
graphs. To Mr. Wigglesworth’s shame it 
must be confessed that he was just as idle 
as he had been in the days of his retirement. 
He still lived in Grey’s Inn; he still rose 
late; he merely went about more and talked 
more; nobody ever saw him working. But 
the world knew his ratson d’étre, and besides 
that it was impossible that a man who was 
seen so much could be conceived as anything 


The Man Who Kept a Diary raf 


but an active man. In truth he had never 
even joined a committee. In the old days, 
except for the sporadic and unsupported so- 
licitations of Mary, he never received a re- 
quest from anybody to do anything; he was 
too obscure. Nowadays nobody asked him, 
though he occasionally accepted the office 
of patron or vice-president, because he was 
too celebrated. “Who else can we put on?” 
the conversation would run. “What about 
Wigglesworth, he’s very sensible and every- 
body knows him.” ‘Oh, you can’t ask him; 
he’s sure to have much too much on his hands 
to settle down to a routine job.” 

A Trusteeship of the National Portrait 
Gallery was another matter; that he was 
pleased to take, especially when he remem- 
bered how little notice anybody took of his 
opinions about art in the old days. This 
was his one real office. 

He kept the diary. It was all he did. 
During those first few years he learnt a good 
deal about human nature. In a few in- 
stances men with whom he had been inti- 
mate in the past seemed to avoid him; they 
grew constrained in his presence and looked 
askance. Once one of them broke silence 
and revealed to Mr. Wigglesworth the dis- 
advantages of his new role. He was sitting 
in his library late at night, drinking a last 
whisky and reading Saint Simon, when there 


28 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


came a sharp knock at the door. “Come in,” 
he called, laying down his book, covers up- 
wards; and there appeared, red and embar- 
rassed, yet oddly resolute, the face of Sir 
Herbert Pantile, the K.C. “Excellent, 
Pantile,’ exclaimed Wigglesworth, ““‘it’s 
splendid to see you. I thought you were 
never going to come near me again. Have 
a drink?” 

“No, thank you,” said the lawyer shortly, 
sitting upright on the edge of a hard chair. 
“Look here, Wigglesworth, there’s some- 
thing I want to speak to you about.” 

“Why not?’ said Mr. Wigglesworth, 
“though I don’t suppose I shall be able to 
be of any use.” 

“Don’t you though. Well, I’d_ better 
come to the point at once. Do you remem- 
ber that time in these rooms when I told 
you about that affair with Sylvia?” 

“Why, of course,” said Mr. Wigglesworth 
sympathetically ; “and I can’t say how sorry 
I was.” 

Pantile glared at him. Then he suddenly 
burst forth. “Look here, to put it bluntly, 
I know very well you’ve got every word of 
it down in your damned diary.” His eye 
caught a large black enamelled deed-box in 
the corner; he flushed again and almost 
shouted, “I won’t have it. You've got to 
tear it out. It’s monstrous. It’s damned 


The Man Who Kept a Diary 29 


blackguardly. Vl, PU, Pll take proceed- 
ings.” 

“Listen to me,” said Mr. Wigglesworth, 
really perturbed and distressed. “I swear 
solemnly that not a word of that has ever 
passed my lips, nor is there a syllable about 
it in any diary I may have kept.” 

“What proof have I got?’ asked Pantile, 
a little mollified but still suspicious; “every- 
body knows that a diarist would defeat his 
own objects if he told everybody what he 
was putting down. I'd like to see that day’s 
entry.” 

“T can’t show you that,” said Mr. Wig- 
glesworth. “I don’t suppose you were the 
only person I saw that day, and the confi- 
dences of others must be respected as well 
as yours. On my word of honour as an old 
friend, your name is not so much as men- 
tioned either on that page of my diary or 
any other. That’s the absolute truth.” 

The assurance was at last believed; yet 
something about the mode in which it was 
conveyed seemed to leave Sir Herbert even 
more angry than he was before. Before he 
was red and now he went white. “Good 
night,” he said brusquely, and walked out 
without shaking hands. Mr. Wigglesworth 
sighed and realised that however silver the 
lining there must always be a cloud. Yet 
how small his clouds usually were in these 


30 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


days! Those who avoided him were as noth- 
ing in number compared with those who 
sought him out. Men saved up their jokes 
for him, and rattled them out breathlessly. 
Women dressed for him; strikingly and in a 
describable fashion, as though they wished 
to be raw material for epigrams; he was in 
a manner an elevator of social standards; 
at his approach the sober vegetable garden 
became the gay parterre; like the sun, he il- 
luminated everything upon which his radi- 
ance fell. Great men, whose eyes would 
have absently glazed if left with him in the 
days of his obscurity, now sparkled and 
shone to meet him. Many and various were 
the confidences he received. He knew, and 
was one of the very few who knew, why 
Crete had not made war on Corea, and for 
the sake of posterity three separate persons 
had given him a full account of the negotia- 
tions which led to the passage of the Im- 
perial Federation Act. 

Private scandals rained upon him. Even 
when, as occasionally happened, a hubbub 
ceased awkwardly as he entered a room and 
he felt all too sure that something was be- 
ing concealed from him, it always reached 
him in the end. “You remember, Mr. Wig- 
glesworth, that day when you found us all 
in the drawing-room together. Well, I won- 
der if you guessed what it was we were 


The Man Who Kept a Diary 3] 


talking about. I’m sure I oughtn’t to tell 
you but I simply must. You'll hardly be- 
lieve it, it’s almost too disgraceful, but Billy 
says that Betty—” Yes, the diary was sel- 
dom mentioned, but it had a thousand con- 
tributors. Anda thousand candidates. Sev- 
eral times a lady told him that she had been 
the One Real Love of some illustrious dead 
man; no fewer than three ladies made this 
assertion about their relations with the 
late Lord Strype, a man of unblemished 
repute. Painters, novelists, sometimes a 
preternaturally intelligent commercial mag- 
nate, sought the diarist’s private and par- 
ticular attention. Two or three people even 
bequeathed flattering miniatures of them- 
selves to him when they died. Truly the 
faces that were presented to Mr. Wiggles- 
worth were not always characteristic faces; 
and he was assured that, screened from the 
world, there was a better side to many na- 
tures deemed hard, ambitious, and grasping. 

He was astonished at the industry with 
which people endeavoured to reinforce the 
impressions they had first made upon him. 
With him the wit was always preternaturally 
witty, the dreamer abnormally dreamy, the 
sagacious man sagacious indeed. He often 
marvelled at the aspirations thus innocently 
revealed to him, and wondered now and 
then, after a long encounter, whether or not 


32 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


he had imposed too great a histrionic stress 
upon some strenuous aspirant after a repu- 
table immortality, whether or not sometimes 
his departure might be the signal for a re- 
action, a collapse, a call for restoratives, a 
swoon even. 


Vv 


Nobody was surprised when Mr. William 
Wigglesworth became a K.B.E. The mar- 
vel was rather that so generally respected 
and trusted a figure should not have been 
honoured before. “For public services,” the 
description in the list briefly ran; after all 
he was patron and vice-president of a great 
many indispensable organizations, and he 
had contributed substantially to the Na- 
tional Art Collections Fund. The Prime 
Minister had insisted; otherwise Mr. Wig- 
glesworth might have declined. He took a 
childish pleasure when attending vast par- 
ties at which orders and decorations were 
worn by all save him, in being the only man 
in the room with a plain black coat. Of 
such parties the diarist was in his later years 
an invariable feature, much balder now, a 
little rounder, his moustache gone completely 
white. He would stand, the complacent but 
charming centre of an admiring circle; or 
wander through the rooms exchanging cheery 


The Man Who Kept a Diary 33 


words with dowagers and diplomatists, art- 
ists, men of letters, and, with a due admix- 
ture of deference, Princes of the Blood. 
Sometimes Mary, now Mrs. Wilkins, would 
be there; ‘‘Yes,”’ she would whisper proudly 
to her companion, ‘‘of course he’s my uncle.” 
And what, in such brilliant scenes, were the 
thoughts of Mr. Wigglesworth—or as we 
must now call him, Sir William—as he 
moved so successfully through this world 
where events were being moulded and his- 
tory, of which he was to be recorder, made? 
He kept them to himself, as had always been 
his way; but they ran like this. “There is 
Barnby beckoning to me. He is shaping for 
an entry in the diary. He conceives it like 
this: 





At the Queensferrys’ crush I saw 
and Barnby. Poor fellow, he has taken 
on too much and they overwork the will- 
ing horse. The Polish business is obvi- 
ously weighing on his mind, but it is sim- 
ply his duty to spare himself. We can- 
not afford to let him have a breakdown. 
He looked anxious, worried, but the lines 
he has contracted only make his thought- 
ful face more handsome. 


Little does he realise that I should be much 
likelier to put it down like this: 


34 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


Saw that pompous ass Barnby at the 
Queensferrys. His stupidity and smug- 
ness are bad enough, but that look of spu- 
rious concentration is more than I can 
bear. It was like his infernal cheek to 
pester me with his veiled abuse of all his 
colleagues. 


And there again on the balcony is Palmer, 
the poetaster. He has seen me, but of course 
he pretends not to have. I know what he 
wants. His pale profile against the soft 
midnight sky, a strange alien in that worldly 
scene. Yes, I know all about that. The 
most disgusting poseur in London, and about 
the worst poet who ever deluded the world 
into taking him seriously. Poor little Jones 
over there in the corner is ten thousand times 
better; Pll go up and speak to him, though 
I shall probably frighten him out of his 
life.’ Then he would go down the stair- 
case, chatting and nodding to the orders and 
decorations, get his hat and coat and depart 
alone in a taxi for Gray’s Inn. The porter 
would unbolt to him and, under the dark 
sky, he would walk through the quiet old 
squares, and up the rustling avenue of trees, 
to his rooms and his secret; a mystery, an 
Enigma, a Sphinx; the repository of a 
myriad confessions and the divulger of none. 


The Man Who Kept a Diary 35 


VI 


Diarists and non-diarists, we all travel 
the same road. The last entry must be 
made. There is a page filled and the next 
page must remain empty for ever. One 
night Sir William left a jolly men’s party 
at Manton’s studio, looking as well as ever; 
next evening the papers recorded that he had 
been found dead in his chair. The Times 
on the following day had a long and re- 
spectful obituary notice. “Sir William,” it 
said, “was a man of great energy and mul- 
tifarious interests. His services to, etc., etc., 
will long be remembered. He had a host 
of friends, and was on terms of close inti- 
macy with half the most eminent men of 
his day. But it is quite possible, nay likely, 
that to our remote descendants he may be far 
better known than to his contemporaries. It 
has long been matter of common report that 
throughout his life he was an indefatigable 
diarist. Few, if any, have been privileged 
to see his records, but his opportunities for 
observation were unique. Wigglesworth’s 
diary may well take its place beside Pepys’ 
and Greville’s. The comparison is not too 
extravagant. Sir William’s industry and 
opportunities were fully equal to those of 
his predecessors, and in point of wit and 
breadth of culture he surpassed both of 


36 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


them. We understand that the executors 
under Sir William’s will are the Rt. Hon. 
Lord Barnby and Mr. Godfrey Palmer, the 
poet, both friends of long standing.” 


VII 


So it was, and in a codicil of the will Sir 
William not only gave his executors full 
discretion as to the publication and expurga- 
tion of his diary and the ultimate disposal 
of the manuscript, but provided that any 
profits arising therefrom should be divided 
between the executors named, assuming them 
to consent to act. The residue of the estate 
he left to his niece Mary, now the wife of 
John Wilkins, Esq., of Somerset House. 
The executors undertook the burden of the 
trust. 

One spring morning, when the sun shone 
brightly and the rooks cawed cheerfully over 
the tree-tops in Bacon’s Walk, a little com- 
pany assembled in the old chambers, still 
tidy and comfortable as their late tenant 
had left them. Lord Barnby had brought 
his secretary, Mr. Palmer had come alone; 
the fourth of the party was the deceased’s 
solicitor who had brought a bunch of keys. 
There was an air of expectation, even of 
excitement, about the party; Mr. Palmer 
fingered books on the shelves almost fever- 


The Man Who Kept a Diary o/ 


ishly, while the solicitor cryptically fumbled 
with papers in his attaché’s case. At last 
he was ready. “Well, gentlemen,” he said 
heartily, rubbing his hands, “we may now 
gaze upon the buried treasure.” The key 
went into the lock, and was turned. 

They pulled them out. There were four 
enormous volumes, as large as ledgers. All 
except one were completely virgin of any 
writing. On the first page of that one there 
was a date carefully written, and a note 
of the phase of the moon: underneath, in 
large block capitals, this sole and simple 
entry: 

“This is the diary I have kept. I have 
kept it for years. -I think, if published, it 
should be published as it stands. Should 
my executors in their wisdom think other- 
wise, the responsibility is theirs.—W. W.” 


Il: THE BEST SELLER 
I 


VYDENE, No. 23 Acacia Road, High- 
gate, was a brick villa in a double row 
of such, with square bow windows upstairs 
and down, and a small turf garden in front. 
The approach to the front door was divided 
from that of No. 25 by a single iron rail, 
over which it was the custom of errand boys 
to stride. The habits of errand boys, their 
callings and whistlings, rather distressed 
Acacia Road, which was nothing if not re- 
spectable. Looking at any of the houses, 
and at number twenty-three in particular, 
an experienced observer might have supposed 
himself able to make a very close guess 
at the occupations, politics, religion, morals 
and incomes of the inhabitants. Yet even 
the most sagacious and likely-seeming guesses 
are sometimes wrong. The other houses may 
have contained all that the observer would 
expect. But number twenty-three contained 
something not found elsewhere in the street. 
It contained a novelist. 
The fact as yet was known to nobody. 
The census-taker had collected from number 
38 


The Best Seller 39 


twenty-three particulars of two persons, and 
two persons only: John Macdonald Bentley, 
38, motor engineer and agent, and Edith 
Bentley, 35, married woman. ‘The little 
maid did not sleep under the roof. Her 
pale face and mouse-coloured hair arrived 
at seven, in time to black the grates and 
cook breakfast; she departed daily after the 
tea-things had been washed up and the sup- 
per-things laid. There were no children. 
Every morning, after John had gone to 
business, Mrs. Bentley had plenty to do. 
She helped Daisy do the bedroom, she her- 
self dusted the drawing-room, she gave the 
orders to the butcher, baker, and greengrocer, 
and she then went out to do the shopping, 
of which, mysteriously, there was always 
some to be done. Almost invariably she was 
back to a solitary luncheon. Very occa- 
sionally she took the tube to Oxford Street 
and, after a survey of the drapers’ latest 
displays and the purchase of a handkerchief 
or a piece of ribbon, she stood herself a 
cinema, with tea on the gorgeous premises 
to follow. She would have liked her hus- 
band to take her sometimes to the films, but 
she could not get him to go. He would do 
a music-hall or a musical comedy now and 
then; he thought little of them, but they 
were a reasonable man’s entertainments. 
The “pictures” he could not tolerate; he 


40 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


disliked the youths and maidens who fre- 
quented them, and they even moved him 
sometimes to grumpy mutterings about “‘silly 
women.” And he particularly disliked those 
films by which his wife was most attracted. 
Mrs. Bentley did not care much for the 
news-pictures, unless they were of royal pro- 
cessions, and she was bored with enlarged 
representations illustrating the intelligence 
of plants and the remarkable, if reprehen- 
sible, habits of insects. For her—Romance, 
physical adventure mingled with Love. The 
mere troubles and triumphs of explorers were 
not enough for her; close-ups of lions and 
tigers helped to fill in her background, but 
gave her no thrill. She must have a hero 
in love and a heroine in danger; the hero 
must be bold and square-jawed, the heroine 
fair, slim, courageous, high-spirited. Ob- 
stacles must impede them and be. sur- 
mounted; revolvers must point at them and 
be knocked aside. She adored defiant and 
deathless love, whether it was on the plains 
of Arizona, where a solitary man on horse- 
back will dash into a ring of ruffians and 
rescue, with a swoop of the arm, a helpless 
but still proud-spirited girl, or in the gilded 
salons of Park Lane, where the millionaire’s 
daughter will walk out of an unrelenting 
parent’s study (after making one last fruit- 
less appeal) hand in hand with the sunburnt 


The Best Seller Al 


lover whom she believes to be a chauffeur. 
She was intensely happy if she could see the 
elementary virtues in action: Courage, Pa- 
tience, Generosity, Sympathy, Kindness, 
Family Affection. Her blue eyes sparkled 
with especial intensity when it was the hero- 
ine’s turn to do and dare, and a strong re- 
sponse rang in her breast when Virility in 
Adversity, assisted by writing on the screen, 
proclaimed with a proud chin the doctrine 
that “A Man’s a Man for a’ that.” This 
was her view; though, of course, it was all 
the nicer when he turned out to be a duke. 
Not that in real life Mrs. Bentley had any 
thoughts for dukes. She was a virtuous 
woman, and she loved her husband. She 
wished, sometimes, that he would share her 
interests more, as she tried to share his— 
though, when he made remarks of Fords and 
the price of petrol and his ambitions and the 
monstrously extravagant proposals of the 
local Labour party, he certainly never 
wanted her to say much. “Oh, John,” and 
“Yes, John,” had been adequate. She treas- 
ured, a little wistfully, the remote days of 
their wooing, when he would pour out his 
dreams of business success and seem to de- 
Tive encouragement from her unqualified 
faith in him. Even then, perhaps, he had 
valued her voice rather as an echo of his 
own; but as he had progressed so he had 


42 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


become more and more self-dependent. He 
had had a rise; he had gone into partnership; 
he had bought his partner out; he had made 
an impression on persons more exalted in the 
trade than himself, and on some local dig- 
nitaries who might be useful when the time 
came. Certainly he knew his job, was in- 
telligent, industrious, and determined; and 
she still felt that he would get through. 
Yet private life did exist; she wished that 
they could do more together and that he 
would not be so curt and domineering. 

Still, he conformed in part to her type, 
and when, simply because she wanted to do 
something in the idle afternoons and was 
persecuted by her day dreams, she began 
writing a story, it was largely on John that 
she modelled her hero. The novel came to 
a premature end. Too much influenced by 
the last three Great Novels she had read 
(and talked about to her neighbours) she 
chose for its setting the northern part of 
Rhodesia. The hero had a red shirt, top 
boots, a horse, and, in the due course of 
nature, a great deal of sunburn; he coped 
with thirst, made fires out of sticks to keep 
off the chills of night, struck goldfields, and 
listened to the roaring of lions. The hero- 
ine dressed in muslin, and was always ready 
to ride two on a horse; she was delicate, 
well posted in the latest novels, yet a good 


The Best Seller 43 


shot and perfectly prepared to lead, till 
something better turned up, the life of a 
lonely settler’s wife. There was no difficulty 
about the heroine at all, and the hero was 
John a little altered; more trusting, more 
egalitarian, more inclined to share experi- 
ences. The difficulty came with the back- 
ground. Much was remembered from the 
other books: veldt, sjamboks, treks, rapid 
sundowns, cactuses, stoeps, quivering heat, 
scrub, and ostrich-farms. At the start it 
seemed easy, but the details ran out; she 
had never been out of England and it was 
a handicap. The book ended abruptly, and 
it was some time before another was begun. 
It didn’t matter; she was only amusing her- 
self. She went on with her ordinary life. 
John, in spite of the slump, was prospering. 
She asked for a new desk and got it. John 
was always splendid about money. He 
spent virtually nothing on himself. His few 
evenings at the Conservative Club were fru- 
gal and always with an eye to business; she 
never asked for more than he could give her, 
and she never had to justify her requests. 
“What do you want a new desk for—just 
for a few bills?” he might have asked. She 
thought, in a frightened moment, that he 
was going to say it; but he was unperturbed 
and authorised the expenditure, kissed her 
and went off up the road, looking neither 


44 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


to right nor to left. Into a locked bottom 
drawer went the old sheets of “Riders in the 
Wilderness”; the top was too tempting and 
she began again. 

Mrs. Bentley’s second theme, fortunately, 
was less exotic. For three years now they 
had spent their annual fortnight in Porth- 
ruddock, a small fishing town between 
Fowey and the Fal. They had enjoyed 
themselves. Sailing, after one experience, 
Mrs. Bentley had been content to forgo. 
Most of the days she had sat on a stone seat 
near the pier-head reading a novel from the 
local general store, while John, in a yacht- 
ing cap, had gone out fishing with an aged 
oarsman. ‘The obvious beauty of the place 
had made a deep impression on Edith Bent- 
ley; thought of from Acacia Road it seemed 
a paradise of fragrance and passion, the 
summer sky, the idle waters, the boats, the 
rocks, the blue eyes and bronzed faces of 
the handsome young men and wrinkled 
elders. Vaguely harking back to it this 
morning she suddenly thought of a plot. 
A mysterious and solitary lady visitor, of 
surpassing beauty and intelligence, should 
arrive—a young woman of title, of course 
unmarried. Across her horizon should pass 
the figure of young Harry the silent fisher- 
man; and before long, when she is cut off, 
after a reckless bathe, by the tide, Harry 


The Best Seller 45 


should descend the precipice and painfully 
carry her up. From there she started. 


II 


It took three months. All that time she 
said nothing to John. She did not know 
how he would take it, but at any rate she 
would keep it as a surprise for him. He 
might, she realised with dread, turn away 
with a contemptuous, “Oh, have you?’ 
But at moments she dreamed that he might 
relax into the softer and more sympathetic 
John she knew to be buried in him, might 
even, perhaps, consent to share in her de- 
lights and, in the evenings, over the fire, let 
her read her novel to him and tell her how 
much he admired her. For she had now 
come to think that it was really good. She 
had made discoveries as she went, surpris- 
- ing herself by her ingenuity, by the fluent 
richness of her descriptions, and being de- 
lighted by the way in which her characters 
came to life and presented her with situa- 
tions of which she had not thought. For the 
first time she began to think that she might 
print it, even make money out of it. What 
was a success, and how much money one 
made out of a success, she had not the faint- 
est idea. But she began to have visions of 
substantial accretions, of a better piano, of 


46 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


a maid sleeping in—there was a bedroom 
empty, besides the spare room that was 
scarcely used—and even of a new house with 
a larger garden. These fantastic visions she 
kept in check, but they would recur. And 
then one evening, when the last correction 
had been made in the tidy manuscript, she 
told John. 

He had come home very pleased with him- 
self. He had sold two cars and bought one 
very cheap, an unprecedented day’s work; 
and he came in, a very rare thing nowadays, 
with a large bunch of flowers for the house. 
All through supper Mrs. Bentley trembled 
with excitement. “Surely,” she kept on 
thinking, “John must see there is something 
queer about me. I hope he won’t suddenly 
ask me what. It’s difficult enough as it is.” 
Apparently John noticed nothing whatever. 
He ate his food steadily and with relish; 
he made brief complacent remarks about 
business and the weather; he congratulated 
her on the meal and openly thanked God 
that Edith was not like some men’s wives 
whom he knew. The compliments were not 
relished so much as they might have been, 
for his wife was preoccupied. She fluttered 
about making him some coffee, an unusual 
treat, she carried off his boots and produced 
his slippers, and she then sat girlishly on the 


The Best Seller 47 


arm of his chair, which appeared to please 
him. 

“T’ve got a surprise for you, John,” she 
said. 

“Fire away, Edie,” he replied good-hu- 
mouredly. 

“Tve written a novel.” 

His face went black. “What?” he said. 

“ve written a novel.” 

“Well, you’d be a sight better occupied 
looking after the house!” It was a brutal 
remark. 

“How can you, John?” she said. “You 
know I look after the house properly. You 
know I’m a good wife.” 

He was a little ashamed of himself. 

“Well,” he went on, “your spare time is 
your own; but I don’t believe in writing 
women.” 

She was bitterly disappointed. There was 
that thick bundle of manuscript, neatly tied 
up in green ribbon, full of the romance she 
would have liked him to share. All the en- 
suing week a resolution gradually crystal- 
lised. She must pursue her dream alone if 
she couldn’t do it in company. The time 
might come when John would be sorry for 
his mistake; perhaps there were, she reflected 
with a sigh, inevitable drawbacks about 
strong men. She had hoped against hope 


48 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


that he might help her to explore the un- 
known avenues of publication; it hadn’t 
even occurred to him that she might be 
thinking of publication, and she could tell 
from his demeanour that if she disclosed the 
fact he would merely tell her not to be a 
fool. Thinking it over, she realised that he 
might dislike publication even more than the 
fact of authorship; woman’s sphere was the 
domestic, and he would feel a fool were his 
wife known to be the author of foolish 
stories. The result was, that for the first 
time in her life she resolved on something 
which she felt to be a deception of him: the 
secret composition had not been that, but 
the affectionate preparation of a surprise. 
She saw in The Daily Mail one morning 
an interview with Mr. Parker Finch, the 
celebrated literary agent of Bedford Street. 
Mr. Finch had just made his fiftieth cross- 
ing of the Atlantic. He gave the interviewer 
his latest impressions of that ocean and his 
experiences of the working of Prohibition; 
he paid hearty compliments to American hos- 
pitality, and he boasted discreetly of the 
novelists he had discovered and the manu- 
scripts he had placed. He ended by saying 
that the demand for vigorous fiction was 
as great as ever, and that new authors capa- 
ble of handling a powerful love interest 
would find a market in two continents open 


The Best Seller 49 


to them. For a day or two more she hesi- 
tated; she was unaccustomed to negotiating 
with the supermen whose names were men- 
tioned in the newspapers; even the local 
councillors whose fame filled The Highgate 
Gazette inspired her with considerable awe. 
Yet, she told herself, Lady Isabel, in her 
story, never quailed; and with that reminder 
she went out to a telephone call-office and 
put her request for an interview through, 
first to a telephone girl, and then to a suc- - 
cession of other voices, of which the last 
assured her that Mr. Finch was always de- 
lighted to consider the work of new novel- 
ists, and gave her an appointment for that 
afternoon. She lunched early and put on 
her best clothes; at half-past three she was 
trembling in Mr. Parker Finch’s antecham- 
ber. She stated her name and business, was 
surprised to find that the clerks at the ledgers 
did not bother to look up, and waited for 
the messenger to return from the great man. 
He came back: “Will you please come and 
see Miss Perkins, who is head of our Fic- 
tion Department?” Along the corridor she 
walked, vaguely picturing the omnipotent 
Miss Perkins; she imagined a fierce-looking 
dame of middle-age, with pince-nez, a set 
mouth and a high forehead. She was shown 
into a small cabin and there she was pre- 
sented to a young lady with very red lips 


50 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


and profuse fair hair, aged about twenty- 
one, but obviously possessing the self-confi- 
dence of maturity. The parcel was undone, 
and “Bread upon the Waters” lay naked 
upon the desk beside a high pile of similar 
packages. 

“It is a pity you haven’t had it type- 
written,” remarked Miss Perkins, idly turn- 
ing the pages over. “Still,” she added with 
condescension, “the writing seems reasona- 
bly clear. Well, Mrs. Bentley, as you no 
doubt know, it’s almost impossible in these 
days to get a first novel accepted. But you 
will hear from us.” 

Mrs. Bentley was slightly chilled; Mr. 
Parker Finch, it seemed, was much more op- 
timistic than his colleague; but a timid sug- 
gestion that she would like a word with Mr. 
Finch made no impression whatever. She 
was ushered out, feeling lost; she was not 
in the mood for a cinema and went home to 
a solitary and rather depressed tea. 


III 


Three months passed, normal months. 
For the first few days Mrs. Bentley waited 
feverishly for news; none came. Other 
novels appeared, some made successes; she 
could not help nowadays reading these with 
rather a jealous eye; their characters were no 


The Best Seller 51 


more splendid, their scenes no more vivid, 
than her own; and she was especially cha- 
grined when she read one with a Cornish 
setting, which had a cynical tone that re- 
pelled her. As the weeks passed she began 
to be reconciled; other stories came into her 
head, but she did not try to begin them; 
John never referred to the novel and never 
even appeared to remember it. He was do- 
ing well, making money; in the winter, he 
casually mentioned, they ought to be able 
to run a Ford themselves which could be 
garaged at the works. Then, at last, one 
morning in June, came a letter from Mr. 
Parker Finch, signed “pp. E.P.,” asking for 
the pleasure of an interview with her; he 
had, he said, news which he thought would 
gratify her. All her visions rushed back 
in a flood; and when she found herself this 
time brought not into Miss Perkins’s little 
den but into the spacious and shiny office 
of Mr. Finch himself, her heart beat almost 
painfully fast and she was barely able to 
speak. The agent, however, did not appear 
to notice this. Portly, suave, grey-haired, 
spectacled, he offered her a cigarette (she 
had only twice in her life been offered one 
before and refused in terror), lit one himself, 
and proceeded to expound his good news. 
His reader, he said, had been struck by the 
popular potentialities of the work; he could 


52 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


say no more than potentialities, for these 
things were always something of a gamble. 
The firm had impressed this view upon 
Messrs. Simpson, the well-known publishers, 
with the result that they had accepted “Bread 
upon the Waters” for publication in the 
autumn. He had hopes that Earwakers 
would do it in America, where the chances 
of a profitable sale were even greater than in 
England. “Here,” he said, “‘is the proposed 
contract. I believe we have secured you ex- 
cellent terms.” He proceeded to bewilder 
her with ten per cents., fifteen per cents., 
twenty per cents., reverting copyrights, Co- 
lonial editions, dates, publishing prices, and 
his own commission. 

“Of course,” he concluded, “‘you would 
prefer to take it away and consider it be- 
fore signing, but we should like it back as 
soon as possible or the book may be held up 
until the spring.” 

He gave it to her; she handled the 
typewritten sheets as though they were 
red-hot; the words swam. ‘“‘How am I to 
make head or tail of it all?” she wondered 
desperately, “and it’s no good asking 
John.” She even thought that John might 
stop the whole thing if she mentioned it to 
him. 

“Oh, please, Mr. Finch,” she said, “can’t 
it all be settled now? Tm sure I’d much 


The Best Seller 53 


better leave all these details to you. You 
are so much more experienced.” 

“Certainly, if you really think so, Mrs. 
Bentley,” he replied, “but I thought it best 
you should not sign without due considera- 
tion a contract you might subsequently think 
not to your advantage. However, if you’re 
really sure: .\°2).7? 

He witnessed her signature to two sets 
of folios; he shook hands warmly; he ex- 
pressed the best wishes for her success; he 
said, ““We must have another one soon, you 
know,” and he showed her out. 

John was out that night, at the Club. 
She was awake when he came to bed and 
long after he had gone to sleep; but it was 
scarcely the time for broaching the question 
again. In the morning she followed him 
down to breakfast; in her place were two 
letters from aunts, and a long envelope 
addressed in blue typescript. She opened 
the others first with an air of unconcern, 
then, thinking that John was glancing curi- 
ously at her, slit the third with a knife and 
pulled out the contents. It was her copy 
of the contract, signed and stamped by the 
publishers, and covered with a complimen- 
tary note from Mr. Finch himself. The mo- 
ment had come. 

“John, you know that story I told you I 
had written.” 


54 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


“Umph.” 

“It’s been taken. It’s going to be pub- 
lished as a book.” 

John did not look enthusiastic, but if he 
was annoyed he had the decency to suppress 
his sentiments. 

“This is the contract, John.” 

“What contract?” 

“The contract with the publishers. Mr. 
Parker Finch arranged it.” 

“Who is Mr. Parker Finch?” 

“My agent.” 

“How much have you had to pay him?” 

“T haven’t paid him anything, John. He 
only gets a commission on what they pay 
me. It depends upon the sales.” 

He could not entirely control himself. 
“Don’t I earn you a good enough living?” 
he asked, looking away from her with a set 
face. Then, hearing her catch her breath, 
he turned around and said more kindly, “For 
God’s sake, Edie, don’t get carried away by 
this nonsense. Nobody’s going to buy your 
book, and if they do you can bet this agent 
fellow will get all there is to be got out of 
it. He isn’t in it for his health. Let’s have 
a look at this precious contract.” 

He examined it with as casual an air as 
he could assume. The terminology was 
strange to him, but he could find nothing 
particularly wrong. “There’s a catch some- 


The Best Seller 55 


where, I bet, but I don’t see where.” ‘Then 
an access of anger came to him as he realised 
that the thing was final. 

“What right,” he said, fiercely, “had you 
to go and fix up this rotten idiocy without 
me? I suppose I can have some feelings in 
the matter. Anyhow, why did you want to 
be such a damned little fool as to sign the 
thing without showing it to me? What do 
you know about money and figures? What 
does any woman know about business? 
You’ve got no more of a business head than 
that cat.” 

She broke into tears. “I didn’t like to 
show it to you before, John; you've disliked 
me writing so; I thought you might have 
stopped me from trying to get it published 
atiall.” 

John was a truthful man. “Well, I dare 
say there’s something in that,” he said; 
“come along now, you'd better cheer up. 
The fat’s in the fire now.” 


IV 


For some weeks after ‘“ ‘Bread upon the 
Waters,’ by Edith Bentley,” appeared it 
showed small signs of success. Mrs. Bent- 
ley had yielded to the blandishments of a 
press-cutting agency, but the first batch of 
cuttings she got was scarcely exhilarating. 


56 The Grub Street N ights Entertainments 


She had had a moment of excitement when 
her six author’s copies had arrived; one had 
been sent to Aunt Jane, one to Aunt Emily, 
one to John’s mother, and one to a school 
friend, now married, in Canada; one she 
had kept for local lending, and one for the 
drawing-room. John, in a yielding mood 
after a profitable deal, had gone so far as 
to say that he “would have a look at it some 
time’; the relatives had all written letters 
full of pride and rhapsodies. “I do so love 
Jacob,” Aunt Jane had said, and Aunt Em- 
ily had written “Lady Isabel did quite right, 
Edie. Whatever the world may say, she 
would have been an unhappy woman if she 
hadn’t. And how splendid Jacob was, giv- 
ing all the money he had to that poor ex- 
soldier on the Road.” ‘These letters she 
read and re-read; but she made allowances 
for the fondness of relatives. Was she 
wrong? she wondered, as she perused the 
opinions of the Press. Two or three lines 
was all she usually got. A paper she had 
never heard of wrote: “A harmless amateur- 
ish romance” ; another “A silly tale presuma- 
bly by a very young woman who has read 
Miss Bagstock”’ ; and a third, which had ap- 
parently confused her with somebody else, 
referred to her book as being “One more con- 
coction, true to type, by this popular author 
who, we understand, is universally read by 


The Best Seller 57 


servant girls.” As against these there was 
some small consolation in the remark of a 
penny morning paper that her book was as 
readable as a number of others with which 
it seemed to have been noticed, and a Scotch 
paper’s warm but all too brief praise of it 
as “an exciting but thoroughly wholesome 
romance written with imagination, verve 
and dramatic power.” The next lot were 
similar, and then, lonelily, came a substantial 
and glowing note from a journal in the 
North of Ireland, which surprised her by 
saying that the book was a magnificent ro- 
mance and deserved a great success. 

The first indication she had that “Bread 
upon the Waters” had sold to the extent of 
at least one copy came from Acacia Road 
itself. Hitherto she had had but a cold 
bowing acquaintance with Mrs. Harbutt, the 
doctor’s wife at the end of the road, a great 
aristocrat. One morning, as she was going 
out with her shopping bag, she was stopped 
by Mrs. Harbutt, who spoke with a sweet- 
ness from which the touch of patronage had 
almost entirely disappeared. “Oh, Mrs. 
Bentley, I was so astonished when Mrs. 
Hopkins told me you’d written a novel. 
You simply must let me tell you that we 
got it from the library, and my husband and 
I have both enjoyed it immensely. Do come 
to tea to-morrow. We have a very old 


58 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


friend coming. He is very literary, and we 
have told him about your book. I’m sure 
you and he would like to talk to each other.” 
To tea she went; the old friend proved to 
be a self-satisfied elderly gentleman named 
Donkin, round-bodied, white-moustached, 
small of eye, who expressed great pleasure 
at meeting Mrs. Bentley. He discoursed, 
while the doctor’s wife watched admiringly, 
on the relation between “Bread upon the 
Waters” and the principal works of Dickens, 
George Eliot, Hope, Hichens, Hall Caine, 
and Dell, all of whom he appeared to re- 
gard as on a level with each other, though 
slightly inferior to himself. Each had his 
merits and his defects; “Bread upon the 
Waters” was a promising beginning, “a very 
promising beginning indeed, my dear lady.” 
Mrs. Bentley was puzzled, humbled, but 
grateful; whenever one of her characters was 
under discussion she showed an animation 
unusual with her, explaining or defending 
her persons with eagerness. 

Mrs. Harbutt was kind enough to pass the 
word along the whole road; several women 
previously known to Edith Bentley only by 
sight accosted her and volubly proved their 
ability to rise to her intellectual stature, 
comprehend her creations and share her emo- 
tions. “I am telling all my friends,” each 
one assured her. Then one morning came a 


The Best Seller 59 


letter from a stranger, a man living in Streat- 
ham. It had been forwarded from the pub- 
lishers. “Dear Madam,” it began :— 


“TI crave your pardon for intruding on 
your privacy, but I cannot help writing to 
tell you that your great book, ‘Bread upon 
the Waters,’ has altered my whole outlook 
upon the scheme of things. I borrowed it 
first from a lady friend. I have now, 
though not rich, bought a copy for my- 
self. J have never been so thrilled by a 
story before; indeed, in the ordinary way 
I do not read novels. You deserve a great 
success. May Heaven shower all its 
blessings on you! 

Yours in gratitude, 
Henry Cutts.” 


This was a joy. Blushing, she passed it 
over to John. He read it with an appear- 
ance of impassivity and handed it back with- 
out comment. Then, as he was moving to- 
wards the hall, he said: “By the way, it 
may interest you to know that one of my 
customers spoke to me about your novel yes- 
terday. Big man in his way, too. It seems 
funny.” He did not add “I can’t imagine 
what they see in it’—he had perused it 
himself and told her it was a good enough 
yarn but a bit off his beat. He was, how- 


60 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


ever, in spite of himself, contracting a new, 
rather uncomfortable kind of respect for a 
woman of whom people spoke so highly. 
“Queer thing,’”’ he thought to himself as he 
walked down to the tram, “I hope it won’t 
go to her head.” 

It did not, though she naturally gained 
in confidence. Mr. Parker Finch wrote in 
late November to say, “Would you mind 
calling at once? I have several things to 
talk over. You may like to know that I 
heard from Mr. George Simpson himself 
yesterday, and he says that the sales from 
your book, slow at first, are now very satis- 
factory indeed. He would like to meet 
you.” When she went, Mr. Finch first of 
all impressed on her the need of supplying 
Messrs. Simpson, who were completely at 
her service, with another novel by June. He 
then said, ‘“Now, can you write short stories? 
At this stage it will pay you.” 

“Would one about a flying man do?” she 
inquired. | 

“‘Admirably, the very thing,” replied Mr. 
Finch, as though the whole plot were before 
him in all its details; “‘let me have it as 
soon as you can.” He added, casually, that 
while she was waiting for her first royalties 
a hundred or two was at her service, if she 
would honour him by accepting it. A pic- 
ture of hats, dresses, and a resident maid 


The Best Seller 61 


flashed across her mind; suppose it was now 
or never? The thought of what John might 
say deterred her, and she declined with 
thanks. The next thing that happened was 
that in the morning paper she saw, and 
rubbed her eyes to see, a letter from a cor- 
respondent raising a point of conduct in con- 
nection with “Bread upon the Waters.” 
More astonishing still was an_ editorial 
footnote (which mentioned the publishers’ 
name) asking for “opinions from our read- 
ers’ regarding the characters in this novel 
“which is everywhere being read and dis- 
cussed.” That same afternoon Mrs. Bent- 
ley was sitting at her desk by the bow win- 
dow, thinking of the self-sacrifice and ulti- 
mate happiness of her stern but tender fly- 
ing man, when she heard an imperative 
knock at the door. Peeping through the 
lace curtain she beheld a young man, a com- 
plete stranger, a shrewd-looking pale-faced 
young man, wearing a rakish bowler hat and 
a smart grey overcoat, who dropped a cig- 
arette-end on the step and trod on it. Daisy 
answered the door, a loud voice spoke, and 
in he was shown, holding out a card in front 
of him: “Mr. Edward Giles, The Daily Mes- 
senger.” 

“Excuse my coming without phoning you, 
Mrs. Bentley. I couldn’t find your number. 
Will you allow me to smoke a cigarette?” 


62 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


He suited the action to the word, replaced 
the case, and went on: “The fact is, my 
people want to know if you would be so 
good as to allow us to print an interview 
with you regarding the Present State of the 
Novel.” 

Mrs. Bentley was at a loss. “I think it 
would be much better if you would go to 
somebody who knows more about it.” 

“Just what we wanted, Mrs. Bentley,” 
said the bright young man encouragingly. 
“If I said that you felt that your own suc- 
cess proved that there was still a considerable 
demand for good books, I should fairly rep- 
resent you, shouldn’t I?” 

“Yes,” faltered the successful novelist, 
not knowing what else to say. 

“And now about this matter of working 
hours. Do you work late?” 

“Oh, no; my husband always spends the 
evenings with me.” 

“The mornings then? The afternoons?” 

Coys es.” 

“In fact, I can tell the Messenger’s readers 
that you are one of those who maintain that 
the faculties are never so bright as during 
the hours of daylight, and that Lord Byron’s 
example of nocturnal work under the influ- 
ence of stimulants is not to be commended 
to creative artists in general.” 

“Yes, that is—yes,”’ said Mrs. Bentley, 


The Best Seller 63 


wishing he would go, but not accustomed to 
the ejection of unwanted callers. Before 
he had gone he had obtained from her simi- 
larly dogmatic views regarding the ideal 
number of sleeping hours, the place of 
women in politics, the respective attractions 
of Cornwall and the Riviera, the merits of 
the younger poets, the prospects of religion, 
and the reform of the House of Lords. 
“Very many thanks, Mrs. Bentley,” he con- 
cluded, clapping an elastic band over his 
notebook and stuffing it into his pocket. 
“No, thank you, I won’t stay for tea. I can 
let myself out. Oh, I beg your pardon, but 
can you let me have a photograph?’ He 
thought little of that old Highgate photo- 
graph of her, but took it and said that they 
would get Thompson and Waller, of Bond 
Street, to ask her for a special sitting. 
“They will like to have one in stock,” he 
remarked as he went, letting himself out. 
She heard his stick rattling along the railings 
as he vanished up the road. She was con- 
fused. 

She was more confused still when, at 
breakfast next day, she looked at the morn- 
ing’s Messenger. There was a whole column 
of it, with the photograph reduced to the 
size and complexion of a black postage 
stamp. Under the headline, in heavy let- 
ters, was a description of herself as “Edith 


64 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


Bentley, who has made an instantaneous 
success with her striking romance of Corn- 
wall.” In the introduction her address was 
given—‘‘her quiet suburban retreat’”—and 
also, what was worse, her husband’s name 
and profession. She turned pale as John 
took the sheet and, grinding his toast, 
glanced over it. Happily, as he had an auto- 
matic talent for avoiding the kind of topics 
which did not interest him, though he would 
have noticed anything about carburettors or 
petrol prices if stowed away in the obscurest 
corner, he stared at the very place without 
noticing the article; then he put the paper 
down, gave her his preoccupied morning sa- 
lute, and walked off. At supper time it was 
another affair. He stalked in looking very 
angry indeed; anyhow it was bad enough 
to have one’s wife in the papers, but to have 
the more flippant and incompetent of one’s 
associates jesting about one’s “quiet subur- 
ban retreat’? was too much. ‘What did you 
want to talk all this rot for?’ he said as 
soon as he had come in, slapping accusingly 
a copy of the paper which he had brought 
with him. With unusual spirit she answered 
that she had said scarcely a word of it. 
“Anyhow,” she remarked, “look at this.” 
It was a letter, just arrived, from Mr. Parker 
Finch, who had written the moment he had 


The Best Seller 65 


seen the interview. “Congratulations,” he 
wrote, “on the magnificent column in the 
Messenger. JY dare say you suspect that 
Simpson’s arranged it, but they tell me it 
was a spontaneous idea of the Messenger 
people themselves. It’s just what we wanted 
at this moment when the book is trembling 
on the edge of a very big success indeed. By 
the way, a draft contract for your second 
novel is ready for your approval. Your 
royalties payable in March will amount to 
not less than £500; the next instalment, as 
the book did not run to big figures for some 
time after publication, will certainly be 
much larger. I should be happy if you 
would accept from me the enclosed cheque 
for £250 in advance of your account. It is 
not technically due, but may be of some 
slight use to you. Yours, with renewed con- 
gratulations.” 

John stared at the letter. Then he stared 
at the cheque. He was white and trembling. 
The sum staggered him. ‘Though not an 
imaginative man he suddenly thought of all 
the hard drudgery he had had to do him- 
self before he earned as much money as that. 
It was cruel. It was incredible. Yet it was 
true. And what couldn’t be done with such 
a sum; and more coming too. But no, it 
was only Edie. There was something funny 


66 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


somewhere; anyhow, he was hanged if he 
was going to be dependent on it or have any- 
thing to do with it. 

“Look here, Edie,” he said, “this is a 
fluke. Personally I prefer honest business. 
Quick come, quick go. You put it in the 
bank and don’t you expect too much.” 

She was chilled. Put it in the bank! Her 
first earnings that Mr. Finch had specially 
sent her to spend; and so much coming too. 
“IT won’t, John,” she said, “there’s lots of 
things we want in the house and I’m going 
to get them.” 

‘Please yourself,” he said, “but it stands 
to reason this can’t last.” 

“But, John,” she protested, “‘you can see 
Mr. Finch’s letter. And they will give me 
a big advance on the one I’m doing now, and 
Mr. Finch says he believes he can get me 
twelve hundred pounds for six short stories 
from The Mauve and an American maga- 
Zine.) 

“Td like to know more about your Mr. 
Finch,” said John. ‘“‘T’ve met these men 
who talk big money before. But please 
yourself.” 


Vv 


He thought it couldn’t last. But it did. 
Interviewers now came almost daily, the let- 
ters from admirers in small sackfuls. There 


The Best Seller 67 


was a slight slackening as the English sales 
waned, and then they began pouring in from 
America. It appeared that from New York 
to San Francisco, the whole population was 
reading “Bread upon the Waters,” and the 
whole population appeared to be of one mind 
in its admiration for the book, its desire for 
further elucidation of certain problems, and 
its anxiety to obtain Edith Bentley’s auto- 
graph. The £1,200 for the stories arrived; 
also £500 advance in the expectation of the 
MS. of “Out of the Mouth,” particulars of 
which were now beginning to be bruited 
about in paragraphs. Most of it did go into 
the bank, but Mrs. Bentley, persuaded by a 
fellow novelist whom she met at her first 
grand luncheon with Mr. Finch and Mr. 
George Simpson, had joined an intellectual 
club, got on terms with a West End dress- 
maker, and contracted the habit of an occa- 
sional taxi, John’s Ford not having yet ap- 
peared. Tempting offers for articles and 
books became frequent; but she trusted Mr. 
Finch and Mr. Simpson; and had she not 
reason? England was nothing to America; 
one way and another, fifteen months after 
her first appearance in print, she had made 
£10,000. If the dramatic schemes that Mr. 
Finch was negotiating were to be successful 
this might be multiplied several times. 
More than once during the year she told 


68 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


John that they would simply have to leave 
Acacia Road; she had seen a nice empty 
house, in its own grounds, by the Heath. 
He remained stubborn. “Put it in War 
Loan,” he said, “and draw the interest.”’ As 
the year drew on and she had an occasional 
engagement at night—in the autumn she 
made her first speech at a dinner—she be- 
came accustomed to a hired Daimler; at the 
end of it her literary friends, who did not 
know John and regarded him as a vulgar 
monster, braced her to the decisive act. She 
took the house. John must move, and that 
was all there was to it. 

The house warming at Heath Crest was a 
great success. The weather was too cold for 
a garden party, but the rooms were filled. 
All Acacia Road was there, Mrs. Harbutt 
being flattering to a degree; enthusiastic over 
“Out of the Mouth,” enthusiastic over the 
chairs, the curtains, the conservatory, the 
parlour-maid’s cap, everything. Mr. Don- 
kin came with her, affable, reminiscent; “a 
better book in some ways than your first, 
Mrs. Bentley,” he said; “very like Dickens 
in some regards, reminiscent of Dell in 
others.” Lady Smyly came from the club; 
she had a young man with her in a morning 
coat and spats, she approved everything in a 
loud voice to the fair fashion correspondent 
of an evening paper who, with the instinct 


The Best Seller 69 


of her kind, had found her way to the 
“event.” Several popular novelists of both 
sexes attracted general attention. Mr. Finch 
engaged them all in turn. Mr. George Simp- 
son himself made a transient and gracious 
appearance, and some of John’s business 
friends with their wives, who had insisted 
upon coming, prevented John from hiding 
upstairs as it was his instinct to do. Still 
convinced that this fortune was all a bubble 
compared with the solid structure of his mo- 
tor business, he had gone on with it, refus- 
ing, moreover, to touch a penny of the money 
that his wife offered him. “I’ve made the 
business myself,” he said, “and I can ex- 
pand it myself.” 

He knew his job, but he did not know 
everything. Six novels appeared in six 
years; two of them became popular plays, 
all were vast successes. Long before Punch 
left off mentioning Edith Bentley because it 
was tired of doing it, long before the first 
“Uniform Home Edition” was published, 
before the first American trip, soon after the 
visits to Spain and Algeria in search of local 
colour, John’s spirit was finally broken. 
Edie, after all, was prudent enough. With 
fifty thousand locked away there was no 
harm in spending any number of thousands 
she might earn. The Bentleys to-day live 
in a large villa at Teddington. There are 


70 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


several acres of garden and a drive. The 
house, a noble structure well provided with 
pilasters, turrets, battlements, pointed win- 
dows, corbels and half timber, was built in 
1870 by a Mincing Lane broker; the cellar 
is large and the servants’ quarters adequate, 
and the Rolls Royce and the two little cars 
are housed in a converted stables. John 
looks after them, it all puzzles him, but he 
knows now that he married a wife greater 
than himself, though it beats him to see why, 
except that the results are there. Sometimes 
he notices covert insults of her in papers. 
“Jealousy, I suppose,” he says; she herself 
never seems to bother. At Sunday luncheon, 
when she is not abroad, Mrs. Bentley is at 
home to all her friends who care to tele- 
phone. Sometimes there are twenty there, 
all apparently rich, judging by their cars: 
overdressed ladies of middle age, journal- 
ists, respectful publishers, a deferential Mr. 
Parker Finch, American visitors, Mrs. Bent- 
ley’s stockbroker, Mrs. Bentley’s solicitor, 
some of the élite of the neighbourhood. 
Mrs. Bentley sits at the head of the table, 
full of laughter now, much fatter than she 
was; double chinned and clad in the extreme 
of fashion. People are sometimes puzzled 
by the total absence from her demeanour 
and conversation of that passion, that ardent 
spirituality, that preoccupation with fire and 


The Best Seller 71 


flood which are so invariably characteristic 
of her fiction. Her talk is of people, foreign 
hotels, and percentages, publicity, the United 
States, the shameful immodesty of some of 
her junior confreéres, the iniquities of the 
Labour Party. This last, long ago, was one 
of John’s topics, but he no longer cares, as 
he does not himself pay rates. For him, he 
drinks, on these occasions and all others, 
rather too much whisky; he suffers from lack 
of occupation, is glad when somebody’s mo- 
tor goes wrong, and, in the mornings, potters 
about the garden in slippers. Edith is as 
fond of him as ever, but she has become ac- 
customed now to treating him as “dear old 
John,’ a quiet unobtrusive being whom it is 
nice to talk to about her affairs when they 
are alone, who is rather shy when there are 
a lot of people about. He always agrees 
with her. Now and again, when there is 
a party, some visitor who wishes, either be- 
cause he thinks John a good channel to his 
wife’s pocket, or because he sincerely wishes 
to encourage and draw out this retiring man 
whom so many treat as a cipher, says to him: 
“IT suppose, Mr. Bentley, that you do all 
Mrs. Bentley’s business for her. Contracts 
and so on. These artists, you know?” 
“No,” says John, “Edie does all that herself. 
She has a good business head, has Edie. I 
leave all money matters to her.” 


II: THE SUCCESS 
I 


“TS there no hope that you may go on, 
Mr. Donaldson?” asked the anxious- 
looking man who sat in the publisher’s room. 

“None at all, ?m afraid, Mr. Hilton,” 
replied the head of the firm. “I need 
scarcely say that I shall be profoundly sorry 
if our personal association is broken, but 
there must be some limit to the amount we 
are prepared to spend on the endowment of 
literature, however good.” | 

“But,” timidly interposed Ambrose Hil- 
ton, “I am convinced that this new one is 
much better than anything that I have ever 
written. I can’t help thinking people are 
bound to like it. Don’t you think I may 
be just on the verge of a success at last? 
You’ve always believed in me; can’t you 
back me just once more?” He was tempted 
to add, “I shall be in a dreadful hole if you 
don’t,” but the remnants of his pride re- 
strained him. — 

Donaldson was a decent old man. He 
read little himself, but he respected intellect, 
and he had always feeders Sin that the firm 


The Success 73 


had a duty to literature up to a point. But 
he shook his head. “I devoutly hope you 
will have a success, Mr. Hilton, whether 
with us or elsewhere. It may be that one 
of our younger and more enterprising rivals 
might be able to do more for you than we 
have been able to do.”” Mr. Donaldson felt 
more than a touch of compassion as he looked 
at the delicate man beside him, the pinched 
intellectual face, the fine forehead, with the 
skin drawn tight and hollows by the temples, 
the anxious eyes, the sensitive mouth under 
the neatly-clipped greying moustache: a man 
all intelligence, conscientiousness, consider- 
ateness, decency: a quiet man who lived for 
his work and had probably never harmed 
anybody in his life. But, as he might have 
said, there was a limit to compassion. That 
way lay ruin. “No,” said Mr. Donaldson, 
“[’m afraid that even if I felt, as I do not, 
that we should be justified in continuing to 
pay these advances, my views would be over- 
borne by those of my partners. We shall be 
happy, Mr. Hilton, to publish your novel on 
a pure royalty basis, but we cannot, in the 
present state of the market, pay you an ad- 
vance which we fear the book is quite un- 
likely to earn. Let me know when you have 
thought it over.” 

_ Ambrose Hilton rose. “I must apologise 
for trying to argue with you, Mr. Donaldson. 


74. The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


I appreciate very much the faith that you 
and your firm showed in me for so long, and 
I quite see that from your point of view you 
are forced to take the view you now do. 
Good-bye and thank you very much.” 

“Good-bye, Mr. Hilton, and the best of 
good fortune.” 

Ambrose Hilton put on his hat, faded out 
of the room and went down the familiar 
stairs, where the glass doors bore the familiar 
names of persons always unknown to him: 
“Cashier,” “Mr. Jellicoe,” “Advertising De- 
partment.” It was a large house; large 
enough, he thought with a sigh, to maintain 
a dozen modest authors like himself. The 
front office was always full of messengers 
fetching parcels, the street entrance always 
blocked with mysterious vans: in the show 
window they lay in rows, the latest great 
successes, novels of fabulous vogue, fashion- 
able biographies, sumptuous two volume 
works of travel which he saw mentioned in 
every paper he opened. What a fly on such 
a wheel must be a person like himself, he 
reflected, as he left Southampton Street, 
crossed the Strand by an island, and, scarcely 
conscious of what he was doing, went down 
Savoy Street towards the Embankment. 
Yet, he had to admit at last, Donaldsons 
could hardly be expected to behave other- 
wise. What call had he on them? They 


The Success 75 


had gambled on him and they had failed. 
They had surely been kinder than most 
would have been. He was a failure—lucky 
perhaps to have found publishers who had 
been so patient. He walked, musing, along 
by the Thames parapet, under Waterloo 
Bridge, and so, past the station, to the Tem- 
ple Gardens. It was a sharp, but fine, 
autumn morning; he had his overcoat on. 
He crossed to the gardens, went in, and sat 
on a seat under the plane trees, pleasant in 
the sunshine with their large yellowing 
leaves and peeling trunks. Twelve o'clock; 
an hour to lunch and nothing to do. He 
laid his brown paper parcel on the seat be- 
side him. It contained the fruits of a year’s 
devoted labour. He fell into thought about 
it and surveyed the whole past which had 
culminated in this moment of grey hopeless- 
ness when the sunshine seemed ironic and 
the chatter of passers-by callous. 

An orphan with just enough money set 
apart for his education, he had been sent to 
a small public school and a small college at 
Oxford. His life there had been, with the 
exception of one incident, uneventful. He 
had had a few quiet friends, mostly in other 
colleges; he had read all the good books in 
the Union library; he had, while an under- 
graduate, contributed a few sensible papers 
and one or two carefully-written stories, to 


76 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


the superior kind of London review. Under 
something like compulsion, but with a good 
grace, he had rowed in the college second 
boat one year and he had attended a number 
of debates without speaking. The excep- 
tional incident occurred in his last Eights 
Week. A friend of his, Arden, had his sister 
up. Ambrose Hilton did not dance and cut 
no great figure at parties of any kind; he 
tended to drop plates and tread on skirts, 
though his mere manners usually occasioned 
favourable comment which would have sur- 
prised him. But he met Evelyn Arden at 
several functions, he had tea with her and: 
her mother in Arden’s lodgings, and he finally 
took her on the river in a canoe, a punt be- 
ing beyond his powers of navigation. Her 
beauty dazed him, her quickness of mind de- 
lighted him, and her responsiveness to all 
his tastes and opinions, as well as little 
jokes, was something that never in his life 
he had experienced before. Once or twice 
they became serious almost to the point of 
tenderness, and he was wild enough to fancy 
she might even see something in him. He 
checked himself, however, realising that so 
lovely and gifted a woman could think little 
of a shrinking, speechless being like himself. 
This diffidence it was, rather than any mun- 
dane considerations about his prospects of 
maintaining a wife, which would have pre- 


The Success BA: 


vented him from making anything like an 
avowal without a more specific invitation 
than he could expect to get. A grosser per- 
son might have noticed that Miss Arden took 
a particular interest in him, might have de- 
duced encouragement from her willingness, 
for the sake of his company, to forgo a good 
deal of dancing, of which she was very fond, 
from her deliberate choice of his conversa- 
tion rather than that of several undergradu- 
ates more celebrated for features, muscle or 
mind, and especially from her action (almost 
brazen she probably thought it herself) in 
opening a correspondence with him a week 
or so after the festivities had ended. Her 
first letter—for she had to say something— 
asked for information about books to read. 
What was the best life of Shelley? Would 
she find Fielding too dry for her? She also 
wondered, in a postscript, what plans he had, 
whether he had begun his novel, the synop- 
sis of which had been so interesting, and 
whether he was ever likely to be in the west 
of England. Hilton replied at once, posted 
the answer after a day’s wait, and then 
feared that she might resent this appearance 
of precipitate eagerness; it was difficult to 
strike the mean between an intrusive haste 
and a too unmannerly delay; he did not want 
her to think he welcomed her letters more 
keenly than he had a right to, and yet he 


78 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


dreaded that she should think him indiffer- 
ent to the privilege she was bestowing. It 
did not occur to him that she also was anx- 
ious not to appear to force the acquaintance ; 
at all events the upshot of it was that after 
some months of intermittent and formally 
friendly correspondence she wrote that she 
had been offered a chance of a year’s holiday 
in India, and hoped they would meet when 
she came home. By this time he was settled 
in London lodgings, with a hundred pounds, 
which was all he had left, beginning what 
he hoped would be a career in literary jour- 
nalism that would keep him while he was 
writing his first books. He pondered pain- 
fully and long over the propriety of taking 
her at her word, and attempting to prolong 
the relation. In the end he did not. He 
was afraid what she might think of him. 
He ought not, he felt, to trade upon her 
kindness. She could not help being bored 
by him; nor, in fact, could any one except 
a few male cronies who knew him intimately 
and had learned to value him by force of 
habit. That was his view; he was always 
frightened by new people, and couldn’t sup- 
pose that they found him anything but dull 
and awkward. 

So there was the end of Evelyn Arden; 
the end in a manner at all events. The rec- 
ollection of her was habitual with him. 


The Success 79 


Only once did he get news of her; after that 
he wanted no more. . . . It was after he 
had been in London some years. He met 
her brother, slightly aged and fattened, at 
Hyde Park Corner; home for a holiday from 
the fruit farm in British Columbia for which 
the history Honours School had prepared 
him. They had lunch together, talking of 
old friends and what had become of them; 
after sedulously exhausting every other as- 
pect of their last Eights Week, Hilton, as 
casually as he could, asked after his friend’s 
sister. “Oh, I remember,” said Arden, “‘you 
two made great pals, didn’t you? As a 
matter of fact, she’s out in India. She got 
married the year before last to a fellow she 
met out there. He’s a judge or something 
of the sort. They haven’t got any kids yet.” 

It wasn’t civilised, Hilton told himself 
after that, to go on dreaming day dreams 
about another man’s wife, simply because 
she had been decent to one. On occasion, 
for he was introspective and prided himself 
on the veracity of his analyses of life, he 
stopped in the middle of the sentimental rec- 
ollection, which he did permit himself, of 
the happiest week in his life, by asking him- 
self whether after all, he, like so many in- 
experienced and romantic youths, had not 
imagined her to be something finer, and es- 
pecially abler, than she was. Had not a 


80 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


fresh skin, clear grey eyes, the daintiness of 
a girl’s dress, her voice, acting on one who 
had been virtually a young monk, had some- 
thing to do with it? How much of her 
triple beauty had been her, and how much 
the long green reflections, slowly breaking 
and uniting, on the Cher, the drooping 
plumes of willow, the ripple by the boat, 
the dappled silks of the cushions, the mur- 
mur, the proud passage of swans? Had 
he not himself been so raw and illiterate at 
the time that any bookish prattle would have 
taken him in, the small talk of a clever and 
amiable young woman who knew how to 
make him conversationally comfortable? 
But no, he knew better. Her very sentences 
remained clear in his memory; the penetra- 
tion of them, the subtlety and freshness of 
their humour and emotional colouring, the 
admirable turn of their phrasing; half a 
dozen such fragments would be quite suffi- 
cient to attest a really remarkable, if still 
immature, mind behind them, and a deep, 
true heart as well. He knew, however he 
might attempt to achieve disillusionment for 
the sake of its cold comfort, that there had 
been no mistake. Hard reason confirmed the 
spontaneous judgment of love; Evelyn Ar- 
den’s had been, without exception, the nature 
most thoroughly in tune with his own, and 
her intelligence had surpassed that of any 


The Success 81 


other woman he had ever met. And often, 
a little wistfully, he would wonder whether 
she had ever seen any of his books; ask him- 
self what she would think of the one now 
being written; and then, sometimes, lapse 
into a daydream. Evelyn was living with 
him. She was sharing his work, accompany- 
ing him on every imaginative adventure he 
had, telling him his mistakes, perceiving and 
praising every phrase that he knew to be 
wise or beautiful. Her presence bent over 
his shoulder, loving and encouraging, shel- 
tering and strengthening. He dreamed; and 
then he awoke to his loneliness and resigned 
himself with a little laugh; for he was not 
one who would continuously luxuriate in a 
sorrow deliberately fed. 


IT 


Sitting there in the Temple Gardens he 
saw again the twenty-five years which had 
passed since he had left the university. The 
earliest of them were years of hard struggle. 
He had a few friends in positions of some 
influence, and there were one or two editors 
who had noticed an unusual quality in his 
work; this meant that without much diffi- 
culty he established certain “connections” 
within a few months of his arrival in Lon- 
don. He was allowed to try his hand at re- 


82 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


viewing for several papers, and no reviewer 
every worked more doggedly and honestly 
at his job. He took from the start “rooms,” 
or rather a room, in a small street off Shep- 
herd’s Market. The neighbourhood was at 
once respectable and picturesque: a little 
huddle of old houses, quiet inns, small shops 
and stables, within a stone’s-throw of Cur- 
zon Street on the one hand and Piccadilly 
on the other. The house was brick and of 
the eighteenth century ; the rooms had panels, 
painted green or brown, there was no bath- 
room, and the landlord was a retired butler, 
a decent and deferential fellow, who had 
married a housekeeper as sober as himself. 
The other tenants were all “single gentle- 
men,” who dressed better than they lived, 
and had friends richer than themselves; one 
of them wore a monocle, and all three were 
in the habit of sallying forth every evening 
with opera hats and ebony sticks. Hilton’s 
room was on the ground floor, overlooking 
the street. It had a faded Victorian air; 
it was dignified in its shabbiness; the china 
ornaments were bad even in age, but the 
sporting prints were almost good. He let 
everything remain, procuring only a convert- 
ible couch instead of the too patent mahog- 
any bed which stared at him on his arrival, 
entirely counteracting the sitting-room effect 
of the sofa, the mantelpiece, and the table 


The Success 83 


in the window, with its green plush cloth and 
twin-bottled inkstand. 

There, after breakfast, he soon developed 
the habit of the morning’s work; a brief walk 
in Green Park whilst the room was being 
“done,” and he came back for three good 
hours of note-making and writing. In the 
afternoon he would usually pay his business 
calls, taking manuscripts to his offices and 
difidently asking for books which he be- 
lieved himself capable of reviewing, then 
sometimes proceeding to tea at one of the 
few houses he knew or at the Club in Picca- 
dilly which he had been persuaded to join. 
His evenings were spent on original work or, 
more rarely, at dinner parties or theatres; 
he took two holidays a year and very occa- 
sionally was invited for week-ends in coun- 
try houses. His reviews and critical essays 
in those first few years made him just enough 
to liveon. Many less able and conscientious 
literary journalists made more. Character- 
istically he was unable to write rapidly; he 
could not bear to mislead the reader as to 
the precise extent of his knowledge or to 
present a plausible simulation of thought. 
He must really exercise his intellect even 
when he was contemplating a poor author. 
He propounded to himself such questions as 
“What does this man wish to do?” “How 
has he done it?’ “How ought he to have 


84 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


done it?” ‘What image will best represent 
the quality of his style?’ “What are his 
intellectual and moral relations?” ‘What 
obscure motives are at work behind his writ- 
ing?”’: and he was never satisfied until he 
had answered them all as precisely as he 
could. His interest in the workings of the 
human mind sometimes made him take too 
seriously a foolish and worthless author. He 
was often in difficulties about space; after 
all his labouring he would find it necessary 
to leave out three-quarters of what he had 
discovered; he tended also to leave out, by 
virtue of his very concentration upon essen- 
tials, the information which his employers 
most desired him to give—he failed to give 
the reader a clear idea as to whether the book 
was really worth buying or even looking at. 
Of this fact he never had more than a vague 
and occasional glimmering, but he agreed 
with his editors when, with a cheerful ac- 
ceptance of the stock metaphor which marked 
the difference between them and him, they 
told him that he worked best on a large can- 
vas. Behind his back they put it more 
crudely. They said that his short reviews 
were both incompetent and dull: “although 
of course there is always something in any- 
thing that Hilton writes, he has no sense of 
proportion, no gift of rapid summarisation, 
and no notion of his audience.” They said 


The Success 85 


also that although they were always glad 
to see him they found it rather difficult to 
talk to him. He had none of the small 
change of conversation and seemed to know 
nothing about the literary world of which 
he was a member—nothing, at all events, 
that was of much service in a gossiping five 
minutes. On small provocation, with cer- 
tain editors who were kind to him and knew 
how to show discreetly their respect for his 
mind, he would precipitate himself into a 
problem that interested him, eagerly ex- 
pounding the results of long thought. They 
would lazily pretend to be taking in what 
he said; then a caller would appear, or the 
telephone bell would ring, or his host would 
begin to look as though he wanted to go on 
with his work. Words that grew familiar 
would be hurried at his ear: “Yes, it’s ex- 
traordinarily interesting. We must have an 
evening together on it some time.” And 
chilled but unresentful, he would go down 
the stairs with his doubts about Pascal, the 
form of the novel, Stendhal, Hazlitt, or the 
future of prose, still awaiting resolution. 
After a while he found books for review 
more difficult to obtain, though in the best 
quarters his longer studies were always 
warmly welcomed. For a brief period after 
the publication of his first novel he would 
have no difficulty in obtaining as much criti- 


86 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


cal work as he wished; but by that time he 
was in a position to do what he had always 
intended to do, namely, devote himself en- 
tirely to fiction. 


III 


For his first novel made him a “name” 
which, for a time, in the narrow world of 
monthlies and superior weeklies, was worth 
something. He took three years over it, and 
put into it every ounce of intellectual con- 
centration of which he found himself capa- 
ble. The title was “A Foregone Conclu- 
sion,” and, though not addicted to play upon 
words, he relished the fact that it meant 
something more than it seemed to mean, 
“foregone,” in this instance, bearing chiefly 
its other, and renunciatory, significance. 
How he had finally and precisely defined 
the theme, the abnegation by a man of fifty, 
who felt himself young, of a marriage, and 
even of a proposal, to a young, intelligent 
and beautiful girl who would certainly have 
accepted him, does not much matter. But 
he could hardly deny the fact that both the 
character of the girl and the fact and im- 
portance of the loss had risen, like a smoke, 
from his own experience. He could not 
avoid them; all he could do, being very 
scruplous about vulgarity and the wounding 


The Success $7 


of other people’s feelings and on principle 
opposed to literal transcripts from life, was 
to disguise the lady physically so much as 
to make her unrecognisable, he hoped, even 
by herself. He changed her height, the 
colour of her eyes and hair, the pitch of her 
voice, the nature of her specific talents. He 
never grew quite reconciled to the changes, 
or easy with the handling of them; he found 
it impossible to regard the new hues as other 
than masks, disguises. However, the girl in 
the book appeared more consistent and at 
harmony with herself to others than she did 
to him, who could think no figure perfect 
which did not in every regard conform to 
the remembered ideal. Both characters, for 
what others there were present were very sub- 
sidiary, were applauded by those who en- 
joyed the book as being completely realised. 
Hilton was told by all the critics of impor- 
tance that his knowledge of human psychol- 
ogy was profound, that his sagacity was 
equalled by his tenderness, that his work 
was the fine flower of centuries of culture, 
that every page of his book bore the marks 
of distinction, that his outlook was entirely 
his own, and that his English was admirable. 
He had fused, they said, his particular story 
and his general commentary on life and art, 
ethics and esthetics; no writer had more con- 
summately registered the finest shades of his 


88 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


atmospheres or more cunningly selected the 
details of his backgrounds. He promised 
to be a prose master, one of the most illumi- 
nating of philosophical observers, one of the 
most masterly interpreters of the human 
heart. All this they said; and two thousand 
copies were sold on the strength of it. Hil- 
ton himself, honest about his own achieve- 
ment, would, in a manner, have preferred 
that they should have been a little less un- 
qualified; what they stated as his achieve- 
ment he knew to be only his aim; still, his 
aim was at least perceived, and he could 
hope, with incessant labour and discipline, 
to approach nearer to it in time, though no 
man might ever completely succeed in it. 
All his old editors wrote to him for articles, 
though expressing doubt whether he would 
now have time for such things; certain hearty 
men in the Club who did not pretend to have 
read his book congratulated him unaffectedly 
on its success with those who were qualified 
to read it; an elderly novelist whom he ad- 
mired wrote him a letter which he cherished 
long after the old man’s death; and several 
rich women invited him out to luncheon 
parties where the elaborate food, the ex- 
quisite dresses, and the politicians’ collars 
made him very ill at ease and the obvious 
despair of his hostesses. But the chief re- 
sult of the respectful chorus was the action 


The Success 89 


taken by his publishers, Messrs. Donaldson. 
They had accepted the novel owing to an 
emphatic report by their reader; it was, 
moreover, part of their general policy, as 
behoved a firm which had been one of the 
three or four publishers-in-chief to the Great 
Victorians, to ‘‘nurse’’ authors who seemed 
likely to be ornaments of their country’s lit- 
erature, and perpetual sources of a steady 
revenue to boot. The immediate sales of ‘A 
Foregone Conclusion” were not large, but 
the critical consensus sufficed. Mr. Hilton 
was summoned to his second interview with 
Mr. Donaldson—then, in early middle age, 
Mr. Frank, only son of the senior partner 
of the time—and the publisher was hand- 
some indeed. “Our opinion, Mr. Hilton,” 
he said, “has been fully borne out by the 
critics. I do not know, of course, how far 
your income from novels may be of interest 
to you” (Mr. Hilton indicated that it was 
of great interest), “but I am prepared to 
offer you, on publication, an advance of £200 
on your next book. I suppose you have one 
in preparation?” 

“Yes,” replied Hilton, “it is half done. 
It will be called “The Contract.’ ” 

“A name of happy omen,” said Mr. Don- 
aldson, “for though I am not proposing at 
this moment a definite arrangement beyond 
your next book, I think I may say we are 


90 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


prepared to back you until further notice. 
We are confident that you will be a success 
in the end, and although we must, for the 
sake of form, say that some time the arrange- 
ment may have to be varied, you may take 
it that for the time being we are ready to 
advance you £200 on every novel you write 
and to keep the accounts for each separate. 
I think it would be desirable that you should 
try to complete one each year in readiness 
for the autumn.” 


IV 


On that allowance Ambrose Hilton, for 
fifteen years, had lived. The annual supply 
was not quite to his fastidious taste, but he 
continued it, and in the end became accus- . 
tomed to the yoke. After all, he reflected, 
all art is content and mould, and a fixed al- 
lowance of time may be regarded as a diffi- 
culty akin to the fixed structure of the son- 
net. Certainly he knew that neither his sin- 
cerity nor the intensity of his effort had ever 
flagged; and, as he gained in experience of 
life and of the medium, surely common sense 
ratified his honest conviction that his work 
in every regard had gone on deepening and 
strengthening. One or two faithful adher- 
ents for long maintained that, but these died 
or left the critical platform. The public 


The Success 91 


showed no appreciation of it whatever, and 
as the years passed he grew reconciled to 
diminishing notice. The second book was 
beyond doubt received with great respect, 
but here and there a warning was sounded. 
“Mr. Hilton,” he was told by one of the 
leading pontifts, “has scarcely fulfilled the 
promise of his first novel. His peculiar dan- 
ger, in point of fact, was evident even there. 
His promise, it seems, may not mature, for 
he shows a progressive inclination to swamp 
his main theme with floods of analysis and 
general reflections which are at best interest- 
ingly irrelevant and at worst tedious.’ Pas- 
sionately, with all the force he possessed, 
he would have contested that view had he 
found a suitable private occasion. He knew, 
how well! with what integrity he had ob- 
served the general shape which he had first 
conceived to be proper to his subject, how 
strictly he had confined himself to what 
seemed to him to be the business of a teller 
of such stories as his, with what labour of 
the mind and strain of the imagination he 
had endeavoured to define and elaborate re- 
lations and states of mind exactly in propor- 
tion to their richness and significance, how 
exhaustive and yet how fastidious in execu- 
tion was the ideal type to which he was en- 
deavouring to conform, even in tone and per- 
fectly proportioned like a perfect painting. 


92 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


‘They did not even see what he was trying 
to do! They thought he was losing his 
thread, wandering, even padding! With 
each successive work, each as he thought 
better than the last, the complaints grew at 
once sharper and briefer. The formula was 
found. In the cruder journals it took the 
simple outline of “Mr. Hilton gives us very 
little bread to an intolerable deal of sack.” 
The more pretentious kind preferred to open 
with “Mr. Ambrose Hilton is a writer for 
whom we have always had a considerable 
respect,” and a demonstration that their in- 
telligence was fully equal to comprehending 
all that he said and meeting his erudition 
with an equal learning; but these also, with 
a mechanical regularity, complained that he 
dealt voluminously in trifles and did not 
seem to know what a story was. It puzzled 
him, though it did not embitter. He knew 
how exciting his stories were, he could con- 
ceive no chase more feverish than his after 
his elusive quarry. Any movement of the 
heart, any spoken or unspoken word, was 
likely to seem to him a momentous event; 
must “‘action” always and only be the bur- 
gling of a house, the escape with a rope- 
ladder, the explosion of a pistol, and was 
nothing worth describing but the obvious and 
garish surface of urban life? He could have 
put up his case, and he was convinced that 


The Success 93 


it was an overwhelming one; but his dreams 
of a community which would accompany him 
in his expeditions after a fuller and more 
thrilling life of heart and mind gradually 
faded. Sometimes he did wonder whether 
any practical steps that he might have taken 
would have made things easier for him. Did 
these men really read his books properly? 
Ought he to have mingled more with them? 
for most of them he had never met. Should 
he have joined Societies, and met other per- 
sons who wrote novels; he, who had not even 
taken steps to thrust himself upon the two 
or three living novelists whom he read and 
admired? Was he not too much of a re- 
cluse? Surely, without immodesty, he could 
claim to have broken some new ground, 
achieved some new beauty? Yet nobody— 
except a few friends who were kind—seemed 
to know it. His later books were scarcely 
criticised at all. 

Once, departing from his usual scenes to 
carry out a project long cherished and long 
prepared for by reading and reflection, he 
attempted a reconstruction of ancient life, 
careful and full, with the utmost possible 
accuracy about the things which most con- 
cerned him and the last attenuation of shad- 
ing. His background was the Alexandria 
of St. Clement, the brilliant city where, in a 
society of the highest cultivation, educated 


94 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


paganism for the first time fought it out with 
educated Christianity. In his man and his 
woman he endeavoured to trace the finest 
operations of both influences with a genuine 
veracity, as they must, in such spirits, have 
been; the effort was immense, but he knew 
the book to be his best. It made no differ- 
ence, but elicited one comment which com- 
pletely baffled him. “This,” ran the stric- 
ture, “is the sort of work which might have 
been produced had Henry James collabo- 
rated with their authors in something half- 
way between ‘Salammbo’ and ‘Marius the 
Epicurean.’” He scarcely saw. the point 
about Salammbo, a book so physical, so 
loaded with material images; but he re- 
spected its author and was utterly astonished 
to find that the sentence was meant not as 
an eulogy but as an almost contemptuous 
condemnation. Naturally he never for a 
moment saw the possibility that his critic, 
over and above anything else, might well be 
one of those whose principal desire is to 
mention the maximum possible number of 
authors in a given space. In a forlorn way 
Hilton took as a compliment what was in- 
tended as a sneer; for a while the recollec- 
tion of it comforted him; in the end he had 
to fall back for comfort upon his own con- 
science. He could see and he could state; 
such integrity would not be wasted; a pos- » 


The Success 95 


terity, however small, would have regard for 
what his own age chose to ignore. For years 
no letter of appreciation reached him; even 
the requests, from Dakota and Kansas, for 
autographs ceased to arrive, for only the first 
two of his books were ever published, in 
whatever small quantities in America. He 
had settled down, he was informed, to a 
steady but a very small sale. Most habitual 
novelists, however obscure, could count on 
rather more; but most were in greater de- 
mand than he at the circulating libraries. 
He did not want vast notoriety, but this 
surely was failure. In his more confident 
moments he thought of himself as a man 
who should pour once a year a little phial 
of distilled water into the turbid tideway 
of the Thames, or as one playing a faint 
Sicilian reed against the blare of a Wag- 
nerian climax. But there were other times 
when the thought of failure, real failure 
as an artist, crossed his mind. Never when 
he was at work, for that always took him 
out of himself and his daily world. But 
sometimes it happened in bed, in the dark- 
ness; sometimes as he took his daily stroll 
and the contrast was pointed between the 
rich equipages and smart clothes that passed 
him and his own neat shabbiness; and more 
than once, in later years, he was acutely 
aware of the possibility after his interviews, 


96 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


which occurred with each manuscript, with 
an ageing Mr. Donaldson. Mr. Donaldson 
was always courteous and kind, yet his first 
warmth insensibly wore off. After the sixth 
novel had been published it occurred to Hil- 
ton that there was a faint new tinge in his 
very proofs of faith. Hilton was too much 
in awe of him to subject him to a thorough 
scrutiny when he was in his presence; and 
the total comprehension of Mr. Donaldson 
was a thing he would never have hoped to 
arrive at even had the inner Mr. Donaldson 
genuinely awakened his finer curiosity, which 
it did not. Yet Mr. Donaldson’s expression 
was interesting and an image of the elusive 
shade stole at last into Hilton’s mind. As 
he signed the yearly contract, renewed the 
yearly salary—for it had virtually become 
that—there was just fleetingly visible in the 
colour of his resolution the expression of a 
Curtius who had engaged himself to leap, 
not once but annually, into the gulf. Had 
Mr. Donaldson altogether lost faith? Had 
Mr. Donaldson ever had faith or concerned 
himself with faith? Hilton did not know. 
All he knew was that Mr. Donaldson had 
at last given him his death warrant with 
great kindness; that there was now, in the 
opinion of an experienced judge, no chance 
whatever that he should ever reach that po- 
sition of established esteem which he had 


The Success 97 


hoped to deserve, that he could not live on 
the hundred a year which had come from a 
great-aunt nine years ago, and that it might 
well be that his worst dreads were well 
founded, that there had been a breach always 
between his conception and his expression, 
that nothing he wrote seemed to others what 
it seemed to him, that in short he was an 
intelligent second-rate writer without a voca- 
tion, a failure, a failure doubly. 


Vv 


Over forty; no future; no training; no- 
where to go; nothing to do. There he sat 
in the sharp sunlight reviewing the past in 
fragments interspersed—for long habit could 
not be broken—with half-hearted observa- 
tions of the life around him, tentative grop- 
ings for the right epithet for a woman’s 
bloom under her veil, for the glint of light 
on the band-stand top, for the colour of the 
embankment parapet, for the scurry of 
straws across the asphalt at his feet. He 
did not see the expanse of his adult years 
as an ordered progress; stray voices and 
faces, long forgotten, came again, people he 
had met only once, parties, far back, where 
he had been taken seriously,'‘hours of ela- 
tion, his first reviewing jobs, books scarcely 
recalled given to him by men of whom he 


98 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


had lost sight, his first welcome from the 
press, the completion of his favourite book, 
delicious days of his holidays in Arles and 
Naples and by the Dutch canals; scraps 
from an innumerable host of such, all within 
the power of divine memory to recover, all 
but a preface to the sombre reality to-day. 
The face of Evelyn Arden hovered over it 
all. Big Ben struck and he rose. He 
walked aimlessly back to the Strand and 
lunched in a cheap teashop off a poached egg 
and a pot of tea, bleak on a marble table. 
The confusion of tongues, the constant shuf- 
fling of incomers and outgoers, the harass- 
ment and hurry of the waitresses, irritated 
his fatigued nerves. He was sick of London 
and the struggle and worry of it. He must 
get away somewhere. He walked to the 
bank and drew ten pounds, to his room and 
packed a bag, and then went to Paddington 
and took a third-class ticket to Warchester. 
It was a peaceful and a homely place, his 
favourite among all the cathedral cities, a 
summary of all the English periods. He 
knew nobody there, but he knéw a good inn; 
and he had not been there for years. 


VI 


When Hilton finished his chop and his 
beer in the ample and ancestral coffee-room 


The Success 99 


of the “Dragon” at Warchester it was nine 
o’clock. He went to his bedroom for no 
particular reason and then came down again ; 
he entered the billiard room and blushingly 
declined a game and then returned to the 
hall; he studied the programmes of the local 
music-hall and the forthcoming Fat Cattle 
Show, the mementoes of Royal Visits, and 
the tariffs of long abandoned mail coach 
services, looked at a stuffed pike, a caseful 
of bright-eyed jays, goldfinches, bullfinches, 
and woodpeckers, and several red-jacketed 
time tables, and then, feeling too restless 
to go to bed, resigned himself to the notion 
of a walk and put on his overcoat and hat. 
No sooner had he left the door and the 
clamour of the bar behind him than he was 
rejoiced that he had made his decision. The 
old High Street, full of gables of all periods 
reduced to one antiquity in the cold and 
brilliant moonlight, was empty of traffic, an 
avenue of mottled silver and dark shadows. 
Passers-by were few and quiet. There was 
no wind and hard frost was closing in; as 
he walked along the dark southern pavement 
listening to his own footsteps in the solitude, 
peace fell upon his trouble. He paused at 
the end of the street where the stone bridge 
arches over the river, and leant over the par- 
apet. Calm in the moonlight was the water, 
broken by a few slow ripples; on one side the 


100 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


walls stood sheer, on the other, ranged in 
receding series like the flat trees of a theatre, 
stooping willows dipped their long ghostly 
tresses to the stream. He was lost in that 
loveliness; yet a shiver of cold made him 
stamp his feet and walk briskly on till an 
archway brought him into the Close and high 
above its shining lawns towered the. great 
cathedral, phantasmal in the moon, shad- 
owed with buttresses and statuary. In for- 
mer years he had seen it many times; ad- 
mired its perfect proportions seen from 
whatever angle, the delicate strength of its 
detail; thought with humility on the devo- 
tion and wisdom of the great unknown build- 
ers who had raised it in an age of more sim- 
plicity and certainty, when belief spoke nat- 
urally in beauty. To-night the detail was 
dim and no thought of human builders 
crossed his mind; the cathedral did not seem 
an edifice of stones, cunningly placed one 
by one, but a great insubstantial flower, 
something which had bloomed there in sud- 
den completion, not touched by mortal 
hands, a vision which had dawned and might 
vanish. Hilton sighed deeply and turned 
from its spectral magic; but as he perceived 
the long line of the houses in the Close an- 
other feeling, a feeling of acute loneliness, 
came over him. Their lit windows were 
ranged there, yellow or red blinded, in a 


The Success 101 


long, low uneven line; as he walked across 
the intervening turf their homely Georgian 
fronts, porticoed and trellised, grew into dis- 
tinctness. Music faintly reached him; a 
voice, a piano and violin. Warmth, secur- 
ity, gentle companionship were there; but he, 
an outcast, was walking friendless in a 
strange town. Ordinarily shy and self-con- 
tained, content to forgo the general society 
for which he was unfitted, and seldom, in 
his own quarters, unable to make satisfac- 
tory terms with seclusion, he now longed 
wistfully for an escape from his solitude, 
and would gladly have called on even the 
slightest acquaintance, had he known such 
to be in the city, and had he been able to 
dare the intrusion. Then, suddenly, an 
ironic truth flashed across his mind. There 
must be people in that town who knew him, 
though he did not know them; people, even 
perhaps, who liked him, and would be de- 
lighted to welcome him. Ambrose Hilton, 
after so long a career of disappointment, 
was not inclined to exaggerate the number 
of his adherents; he had never been in the 
way of meeting them, and he did not know 
who they were. But presumably, with his 
minute but “‘steady” sale, there must be 
some. He was no favourite of the libraries, 
and the supposition that Messrs. Donaldson 
persuaded, by lavish advertisement, a fresh 


102 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


lot of innocents to buy each of his novels 
as it came out, was untenable, for they had 
long ceased to advertise them at all, except 
in the barest annunciatory way. No; there 
might be thousands who had two of his 
novels apiece, or hundreds who had many or 
most of them. He amused himself sadly 
with the arithmetic. Warchester, though a 
small city, must contain a more than average 
proportion of cultivated persons. Very 
likely there were—well, two households in 
Warchester where a conscious penchant for 
Hilton’s novels was confessed, two readers 
who were familiar with that long series of 
his thoughts, who knew, very likely, when 
he was born, and even what he looked like, 
who might consequently be glad,—even, he 
joked incredulously, honoured—to receive 
him, did they know he was wandering lone- 
lily about their streets. Call it two. He 
tried to picture them: an intelligent under- 
graduate home for the vacation, a thin-faced 
contemplative ecclesiastic, a pair of gracious 
spinsters with greying hair. ‘Even in this 
house, perhaps,” he thought, as through three 
lit windows with half-drawn curtains he 
caught glimpses of mahogany, old silver, and 
the corner of full shelves. Footsteps came 
suddenly upon him, and at the gate, within 
a few yards of him, a dark form fell on the 
ground with a moan. 


The Success 103 


Hilton stooped, raised her head, and found 
she was at once heavy and in a dead faint: 
a rubicund woman gone pale, middle-aged, 
pathetic in the light that filtered from a 
window through the railings. There was 
nothing for it but to explore the Christian 
charity of a Cathedral close. People were 
obviously up in the house and it was not 
quite ten: he gave a little ring, and tapped 
quietly with the pretty brass knocker in case 
the servants should have gone to bed, leav- 
ing his charge perforce on the ground with 
his overcoat under her head. A maid came. 
“T’m so sorry to trouble you,” said Hilton, 
using his accustomed opening sentence for 
every kind of conversation, “but a lady 
seems to have fainted on your doorstep, and 
I thought perhaps you might have a little 
brandy.” 

“Why, certainly, sir,” exclaimed the maid, 
pleasantly excited, “won’t you please to 
come in while I tell master?” 

“No, thank you,” he replied instinctively, 
“T think [’d better hold her.”” He went out 
to the pavement again, listened to the pa- 
tient’s breathing and counted what he sup- 
posed to be her pulse without having the 
slightest notion how numerous it should be. 
Then to the lighted door came tripping the 
blushing maid-servant, carrying a cut-glass 
tumbler of yellow liquid, followed by a 


104 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


sturdy silver-haired gentleman in dinner 
jacket and black tie. They stepped across 
the three yards of garden path. 

“Oh,” exclaimed the maid, “why it’s 
Cook!” 

The three of them carried her in. She 
was given the restorative and assisted to a 
sofa, where she came round. At last “quite 
all right now,’’ she was led away by her 
junior colleague, and Hilton, acutely feeling 
that he was no member of this family circle, 
attempted to go. “Certainly not, sir,” said 
his host, emphatically, “put that coat down. 
Now sit down yourself. Will you have a 
whisky or would you rather have a brandy?” 
On the edge of a chair Hilton did sit, ob- 
serving it was really very late and he was 
sure his host was just going to bed. ‘‘Cer- 
tainly not, sir, why I’ve only just made the 
fire up. Say when!” As he sipped his 
whisky, drew the first puffs of his cigar, and 
sank gradually into his deep armchair, grow- 
ing comfortably warm, Hilton glanced rap- 
idly round at the admirable old furniture, 
the numerous bookcases, large and glass- 
fronted or small and open, the baby-grand 
piano, the desk, the mirrors in which the 
candles filed away in endless diminishing 
series, and the pictures. There were engrav- 
ings, early water-colours, a few dimly seen 


The Success 105 


oils, which might be Samuel Scott’s and 
Bonington’s. 

“Interested in pictures?” asked his host. 

“Yes; especially in those of your period.” 

A new interest appeared in his host’s 
small, puckered eyes, and his rather grim, 
square face assumed a new liveliness. He 
showed Hilton what he had in the room. 
Then he sat down again. “But you don’t,” 
he said, “live anywhere near the Cathedral 
here, do you?” 

“Oh dear no,” replied the novelist, “I’m 
only here for the night. I was out for a 
moonlight walk.” 

“Might I take the liberty of asking your 
name? Mine is Dawkins.” 

“Hilton, I’m called.” 

‘An odd coincidence,” said Mr. Dawkins. 
“Although I daresay you might have found 
the same thing on a good many other nights. 
As a matter of fact, when you knocked, I 
was just reading a book by a namesake of 
yours.” ) 

Hilton looked at the little table by his 
host’s elbow. There was no doubt about 
that rough blue cover. “Does it happen to 
be “The Lost Torch?’ ” he asked. 

“Yes. Do you happen to know it?” 

“As a matter of fact,” said Hilton, blush- 


106 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


ing, “I wrote it myself. How extraor- 
dinary !” 

The man’s grim face lit up. “You don’t 
mean it, sir! Are you Mr. Ambrose Hilton? 
Well, well, I never thought to have such 
luck. And I’d just finished the book. Take 
another whisky. Yes, you must. You 
needn’t think I’m going to let you go now 
for a bit.” 

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to 
bed?” asked Hilton, feebly and insincerely. 

“Certainly not. I am always late even 
when alone.” 

Whilst Hilton was being conventionally 
catechised about his visit, and his previous 
visits, to Warchester, his thoughts darted 
back, with irony, pleasure and surprise, to 
his recent meditations in the moonlight, and 
the odd statistical calculation in particular. 
So here was one of the two Warchester 
devotees whom the law of averages seemed 
likely to allow him. Such actually existed; 
he was not merely read, and praised in kind- 
ness, by his London acquaintance. Mr. 
Dawkins, who was obviously nothing if not 
blunt and straightforward, began to un- 
bosom himself on the subject of Hilton’s 
work and position, a subject which he was 
clearly not in the habit of discussing every 
day. “I don’t,” he said, “go about very 
much and I don’t know many people who 


The Success 107 


read, but I imagine your circulation is not 
very large, Mr. Hilton?” 

“T’m afraid it isn’t,” said Hilton, looking 
at his boots. 

“T daresay,” continued Mr. Dawkins, 
“that the Dean and Chapter have never so 
much as heard of you.” 

“Only too likely, I fear,” replied Hilton, 
amused by this candour. “I can hardly say 
that I have been a success.” 

“Well,” his host went on, swishing from 
the syphon as he began, “that is what I 
simply cannot understand. Still, it depends 
what you call a success. I must tell you 
that you have given me more pleasure than 
any living writer. I have all your books 
here,” indicating shelves sunk in the white 
panelling next his chair, “and there are few 
that I have not read twice, some three times. 
It’s only in the last few years, since I came 
here, that I have read much,” (Hilton pic- 
tured him as having been in business abroad, 
America, say, or Hongkong) “and I dare- 
say some of these modern things may be be- 
yond my comprehension. But I simply can’t 
get on with most of them. Some are silly, 
some are pretentious; even the clever ones 
do not give one anything to bite on. I may 
be old-fashioned, but I like a novelist to 
think and to be ample. I want him to create 
a world for me, not to give me brilliant 


108 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


scraps. You do that. I daresay some of 
them find you too tough for them, or not 
exciting enough. There may be other books 
like yours; if so I haven’t come across them.” 
He proceeded, with the simplicity of the 
man unaccustomed to literary conversation, 
to tell Hilton much that he knew already 
about his characters, his style, his descrip- 
tions, his view of life. Possibly some of the 
last finesses of language and imagery may 
have escaped so hard-headed and, in a man- 
ner, inexperienced a reader, but this could 
only be guessed; for even where he could 
not precisely define his satisfaction he plainly 
received it. Here, thought Hilton, was one 
of the Warchester readers; a better could 
hardly be hoped for in an imperfect world. 
Was there really, could there ever have been, 
a second? ‘Now here,” said Mr. Dawkins, 
continuing his explanation, “‘is the sort of 
thing I mean.” He drew from the tight 
shelf the last novel but one, a well-worn 
copy, ran through it, found a page, and 
handed it to Hilton with a finger pointing 
to a paragraph. There was a pencilled line 
down the whole margin. 

“Yes,” said Hilton, “that cost me a lot of 
trouble, and I admit I was pleased with it. 
I see you have the habit of marking your 
books. I have myself.” 

“No,” replied Mr. Dawkins, “in point of 


The Success 109 


fact I don’t. Something stops me. That 
book, and some of the others, are full of 
marks, but they are not mine. The volumes 
are duplicates. They belonged to a friend 
of mine who used to live here: actually the 
friend who introduced me to your works, 
for which I am eternally thankful. You can 
see how freely that one is marked.” Hilton 
turned the pages and looked at the pencil- 
marks, long and short. Yes, freely; and 
how wisely, how percipiently! Scarcely a 
sentence was marked which he had not 
known, or at least hoped, to be exceptionally 
good. He noticed page after page, line after 
line: his most carefully built pictures, his 
most delicate and evanescent shades of emo- 
tion and characterisation, the most poignant 
of his moments of spiritual experience, his 
faintest subsmiles, the finest turns of his dis- 
creet music: all had been surely seized by 
an eye and a heart that nothing true and 
good could escape and, as it seemed, nothing 
half-done deceive. He looked up; Mr. 
Dawkins, his legs outstretched and his hands 
in the side-pockets of his jacket, was gazing 
into the fire. 

“Your friend,” Hilton remarked, ‘must 
have been an extremely good critic.” 

“Yes,” Mr. Dawkins answered musingly, 
without moving his head. Hilton turned a 
few more pages. The only thing which sur- 


110 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


prised him was that sometimes the pencil 
had noted sentences he had thought common- 
place though honest maxims about life and 
so on, and sentences to the deepest meaning 
of which he had thought himself alone to 
have the key, words into which his own in- 
ner conflicts had betrayed him, words, well 
enough to any eye, but to himself known 
as the vehicles for his personal loss and long- 
ing and an old private grief. 

“But,” he said, “I am rather puzzled that 
some rather ordinary sentences should have 
been marked. I suppose one can never be 
sure what one’s words convey to any one 
else.” | 

“Never, I suppose.” 

“I should like to have met your friend,” 
Hilton went on, “he must have been un- 
usual.” 

“Not he,” said Mr. Dawkins, “she. It 
was a lady.” 

It surprised Hilton, who, unaccustomed to 
visualising even his men readers, had never 
supposed himself to appeal to women, with 
whom he thought himself too dull, too pre- 
occupied with intellectual things, even to . 
converse with success. “She has left War- 
chester, then?’’ he asked. 

“She is dead,”’ said Mr. Dawkins, a sigh 
implicit in the words. He paused. A flame 
leapt in the fire and the ticking of the clock 


The Success 111 


became audible. “That is why I have some 
of her books; she left instructions that I 
was to take anything [ liked. I cannot tell 
you the difference it has made to me or what 
she did for me, the kindest of friends. She 
came here to live a year or two before me; 
her house was just across the Close. She 
lived a quiet life, alone, but she must have 
given happiness wherever she went. She 
admired you very much. If that isn’t suc- 
cess, I should like to know what is. Now 
I come to think of it, I won’t swear that she 
didn’t say that she had once met you.” 

“What was she called?” 

“Her name was Mrs. Howard.” 

“T have met several Howards, but I doubt 
if they liked my books.” 

“Possibly I am mistaken. Anyhow it 
must have been so long ago that you could 
hardly be expected to remember her. Per- 
haps it was before she married. Her hus- 
band was a judge. Before she came here as 
a widow, she was in India for many years.” 

India! Hilton nearly dropped the book 
that was in his hands: his worthless book, the 
Dead Sea fruit that he would have destroyed 
in a moment for a glimpse of what returned 
to his mind. India! name of mysterious 
import, but associated for him with one thing 
only, all its tribes and potentates, temples 
and elephants, jungles and deserts, beasts, 


112 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


hill-stations, myths, mountains, rivers, sun- 
light, soldiery, a vague and inchoate back- 
ground to one woman long gone from sight 
but perpetually imagined. He forced him- 
self to say something, wondering that he saw 
no sign that Mr. Dawkins had an inkling 
that his heart was pounding, that he was 
controlling a trembling body, that something 
was happening to the skin of his face. Could 
this incredible coincidence have happened? 
No, no, it must not be true that Evelyn 
Arden was dead. India was a vast place 
and Warchester a small; he might have met 
a Mrs. Howard. As he talked of indifferent 
things, his eyes kept glancing at the pages 
which his shaking fingers turned. There was 
another stray sentence marked: on the very 
last page: a casual conjunctive sentence from 
a long final meditation: “a word twenty 
years ago might have made all the differ- 
ence.” Full of dread but unable to refrain, 
wanting to cry aloud, he went back to the 
beginning and turned to the fly-leaf. There 
it stood, small, motionless, confronting his 
moist eyes: the signature, unreal as to the 
second half of it, “Evelyn Howard”: a 
slight pencilled name in the small but bold 
hand of another time, not a stroke of the 
“Evelyn” changed from those old signatures 
which he knew by heart. With a great 
effort, he prevented himself from breaking 


The Success TS 


down. The room swam round a vision of 
the ghost who had visited it as it were 
but yesterday ; the clock ticked “Dead, dead, 
dead, dead.’ He set his face hard. “TI think 
I remember Mrs. Howard now,” he said: 
“T hope she did not suffer before she died.” 

Mr. Dawkins looked up, with a slightly 
puzzled expression. “No,” he said, rising 
as Hilton had risen, “she died suddenly. 
She was still young and very beautiful. 
Must you go? Well, I shall always re- 
member this visit and be grateful to Cook 
for fainting.” They went out into the hall, 
and he continued: ‘“‘Let me help you on with 
your coat. It is a cold night. The moon is 
still up. I should be honoured if you would 
come again some time. Now I think of it, 
there is somebody else in Warchester who 
would be sorry to miss a chance of seeing 
you. That’s Miss Penfold, of the High 
School, who is a great disciple of yours. I 
suppose you couldn’t come here to-morrow 
for tea with her if I could arrange it?” 

“TI should have been very glad,” said Hil- 
ton, his face turned to the night, “but I shall 
be obliged, after all, I think, to leave War- 
chester by the first train to-morrow. You 
have been very kind. I hope we shall meet 
again. Good-night.” The door shut behind 
him and his footsteps rang again on the 
stones. 


IV: THE GOLDEN SCILENS 
I 


ITTLE Mackenzie Wile lived with his 
little wife in a little flat near Walham 
Green. He was half Scotchman and half 
Jew: an alarming combination on paper but, 
in this instance, not at all alarming in the 
flesh. A more agreeable and harmless little 
pair than he and his wife never existed: 
everybody who knew them shared their re- 
gret that they had no children, though add- 
ing the silent rider that perhaps it was just 
as well in one way because they found it 
hard enough to live as it was. People who 
knew him very slightly would refer to him 
kindly behind his back as “‘poor little Mac- 
kenzie,’ though they addressed him as 
“Wile”; he was very seldom Mistered, 
whether in his presence or out of it. “A 
good little soul,” they would say; and “he 
really does know an awful lot about some 
things’; and, more pompously, “he is an 
extraordinary mixture of shrewdness and 
simplicity.” 
The simplicity was always charming and 
the shrewdness was sometimes useful. Men 


The Golden Scilens 115 


smiled in a friendly way when they conjured 
up a picture of him: the small shabby figure, 
the round head, the crinkly fair hair grow- 
ing thin on top, the wide eyes behind the 
round spectacles, the squat fleshy nose, the 
small fair moustache over a mouth half-open 
in a timid apologetic smile. He always 
peered round an editor’s door with the look 
of one who feared to be thrown downstairs, 
and wished to disarm the enemy by a frank 
revelation of his willingness to go at a word 
if he was not wanted. Yet who could have 
had the heart to kick him out? He would 
often, so peculiar was his scale of values, 
show surprise as well as regret when pro- 
posals were “turned down” which nobody 
but he would have made. Sometimes he 
wished a weekly to take a full-length review 
article on a young Polish novelist whom he 
thought ought to be translated; sometimes 
he desired eight pages in a congested monthly 
for the full exposition of a new fact he had 
discovered regarding the parentage or place 
of marriage of some Elizabethan writer, a 
Greene or a Marston, or a new theory as to 
the printer of some volume of sonnets by 
Googe or Watson. He was very interested, 
so why was not everybody? It all seemed 
very arbitrary to him, but he made all the 
suggestions he could, and every now and 
then his suggestions were welcomed. The 


116 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


weeklies gave him a few books to review; 
the Times Literary Supplement occasionally 
printed a_ bibliographical communication 
from him as “From a Correspondent’; and 
at times, because something about which he 
knew had become fortuitously topical, he 
appeared with a full-dress article in one of 
the solid reviews. Odd paragraphs he pro- 
duced in numbers, and he received two or 
three times a week postcards ending “I ex- 
pect you know about this: could you do us 
a note?’ He did hack translation and he 
engaged ina little private trading. He knew 
all the booksellers, and when he bought from 
one to sell to another, neither minded, be- 
cause they all liked Wile, and they all made 
their profits, and they all on occasion got 
valuable information and advice from him. 
This is all put in the past tense: to-day, 
happily, Mackenzie Wile need no longer 
work as hard as he did, and his little wife, 
though she still sews and knits incessantly, 
no longer has to conceal her worries under 
a brave face. From the way in which this 
remarkable transformation took place sev- 
eral lessons may be drawn. One is that we 
can never tell when a hobby, any hobby, 
may not turn out to be useful; and another 
that Mackenzie’s simplicity was distinctly 
limited and his shrewdness even more emi- 
nent than his friends had suspected. 


The Golden Scilens BU 


If there is one thing more than another 
which Mackenzie really enjoyed, it was the 
study of booksellers’ catalogues. At break- 
fast he usually had one propped against his 
tea-cup; his evenings off were invariably de- 
voted to the pastime. Sometimes he had 
urgent work to do, and once or twice a month 
some literary friend would generously come 
in for a talk. This would cause a commo- 
tion. Both the Wiles would give the guest 
an eager welcome, there would be a mag- 
nanimous contest over the only comfortable 
arm-chair, and Mackenzie, after a hurried 
search in the bedroom for his wife’s purse, 
would run out to the Walham Arms for 
three bottles of beer. Most nights were free, 
however, and while his consort sewed Mac- 
kenzie would pore over the latest catalogues, 
from the shops and the salerooms, with a 
stub of pencil in his hand and a jumble of 
worn reference books on the floor beside him. 
He could seldom buy anything unless it was 
very cheap and promised, at need, an easy 
profit; but he learnt and he loved to learn. 
Once a month, perhaps, tempted by some- 
thing about which he had special knowledge 
or by a large assortment of unclassified old 
books which might contain treasure, he at- 
tended an auction for an hour or two: if he 
bid for a small lot or two the booksellers did 
not unduly embarrass him by competition. 


118 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


It was, therefore, only in the ordinary course 
of things that he should have visited 
Hodgeby’s rooms on the Monday morning 
when the tenth instalment of the celebrated 
Vernon collection of manuscripts was on 
view, preparatory to the sale on the follow- 
ing day. He had studied the catalogue 
closely, and there were many interesting and 
valuable items; in any event he would not 
have willingly missed an important stage in 
the slow dispersal of that vast and historic 
collection which was taking even more years 
to break up than had been occupied in its 
formation. 

He spent most of the morning by the 
shelves, examining illuminated missals, frag- 
ments of plays, old vellum deeds, bundles 
of letters, poems, ecclesiastical accounts: for 
Sir William Vernon’s taste, if it deserved 
such a name, was very catholic, and he would 
buy anything so long as it was hand-written 
and old. Mackenzie would have liked to 
linger over many of the lots, but he dared 
not waste time, and his progress was made 
all the quicker owing to the fact that he al- 
ways modestly evacuated a place which any 
larger and redder man seemed desirous of 
occupying. He was not a prospective pure 
chaser and he did not wish to intrude. Yet, 
just before noon, he reached a corner which 
for some time he showed no inclination to 


The Golden Scilens 119 


leave: and he became so absorbed in a vol- 
ume that those who wished to reach some- 
thing beyond him were forced rudely to 
nudge him out of the way. Brooks of Ox- 
ford Street noticed him with amusement. 
“What’s he found now?” he remarked with 
a smile to another trade friend of Macken- 
zie’s. ‘Oh, some curio or other, I suppose,” 
said the friend. Mackenzie was oblivious. 
At last, unobtrusively slipping his volume 
back into its inconspicuous place, he turned, 
and with a firmness of movement that he 
had never achieved before, strode out into 
the street and performed an action he had 
never performed before. He hailed a cab. 

“Where to?” asked the driver. 

“British Museum. Go like hell,” said 
Mackenzie, not even blushing at the unusual 
strength of his own language. The cabman 
approximated as nearly as he could to his in- 
structions, and in five minutes pulled up out- 
side the solitude where flocks of Venus’ doves 
softened the austerity of Minerva’s pillars. 
“Wait,” said Mackenzie; and hastened up 
the gravel without giving the dubious cabby 
anoption. He scuttled through the hall and 
down the corridor to the Reading Room, 
nodding to the attendant, who knew him 
well. Behind the central ring of counters he 
espied the bald head and black moustache 
of Mr. Curtain, the very man he wanted, 


120 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


and, by a stroke of luck, in the Reading 
Room. Mr. Curtain came to his message. 

“What can I do for you?” he asked. 

“T must have a few minutes with you be- 
fore lunch,” said Mackenzie. 

“Well ?? 

“T can’t talk here. It is really impor- 
tant. Take me toa private room. I promise 
it’s worth while.” 

“Come along then,” said Curtain, pursing 
his lips resignedly, and they went off through 
a swing door to the corner where one of the 
greatest of experts made epochs in biblio- 
graphical history. Mackenzie pulled a 
Hodgeby catalogue out of his pocket, laid 
it down, opened at the last lots, and said, 
with an abruptness that startled his com- 
panion, who had always regarded him as the 
mildest of Museum frequenters: 

“Tt’s about this!” 

“What’s about what?” asked Mr. Curtain. 
very reasonably. 

“Tll tell you ina minute. I’m talking to 
you in the completest confidence, as I know 
that keen as you are on the Museum my 
secret will be safe with you. Do you know 
a rich man who can be trusted?” 

“Rather a large order, isn’t it?” observed 
Mr. Curtain. “But I daresay I might think 
of one if you gave me a few moments. . . . 
Yes, I do. There is a friend of mine called 


The Golden Scilens 1Zt 


Campbell. He is a rich man, and he is com- 
pletely honest. . . . Of course he inherited 
his money.” 

Mackenzie Wile fastened upon the essen- 
tial and neglected the trimmings. “I want 
to see him at once,” he said, ‘‘and I will tell 
you why.” 

2 2 2 xk > 

Half an hour afterwards, talking excitedly 
in whispers, they reappeared in the’ Reading 
Room. Mr. Curtain passed one of his col- 
leagues. “I may not be back at all this 
afternoon,” he remarked. Outside, Wile’s 
cabman, in the last stages of hope deferred, 
was attempting to engage a policeman in 
conversation. His strained look vanished as 
he caught sight of his long-lost fare. 

“Tell him where to go, please,” said Mac- 
kenzie. 

“460 Addison Road,” said Mr. Curtain. 

“Have you got enough for the fare on 
you?” inquired Mackenzie. 

“That’s all right,” said Mr. Curtain. 

As they ran along the streets behind Ox- 
ford Street they were both too excited to 
talk, but occasionally the little man drove 
in points he had made already. ‘Of course, 
as I said,” he remarked several times, “‘it is 
only a guarantee I want from Mr. Campbell. 
It’s quite likely that I shan’t need his money. 
It might go for next to nothing,” and “You 


122 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


must go straight up there after lunch. 
They’d better not see us together. For good- 
ness’ sake don’t look at it too long, or some 
one will smell a rat. They know you too 
well.” 

“All right,” Mr. Curtain kept replying. 
As they stopped outside the house in Addison 
Road he cheered his companion with a last 
reassurance. “I’m sure,” he said, “that 
Campbell will back you. It would amuse 
him, and he likes to see business men done 
down.” 


II 


The sale at Hodgeby’s was the most nota- 
ble of the season, and the only occasion on 
which the rooms were crowded. Every 
dealer in London was there, though few of 
them expected to get much that was worth 
having against the competition of the Ameri- 
can book-kings who had come over especially 
for the sale: Mr. Ling, of New York, who 
was staying at Claridge’s; Mr. Hopkins, of 
Philadelphia, who was staying at the Carl- 
ton; and Major Levinstein, of Chicago, who 
was staying at the Ritz. These three mag- 
nates, all wearing confident smiles, sat at the 
big table in the middle; they were some dis- 
tance apart and occasionally chaffed each 
other between the events. Around them 


The Golden Scilens 123 


were their British confréres; behind them a 
dense miscellany of poor and rich, including 
several noble collectors who had never been 
to an auction before, two or three ladies on 
the arms of explanatory cavaliers, small 
bookselling fry from the suburbs, journalists, 
bibliographers, clerks and pedlars. Mr. Cur- 
tain was there, no doubt with a watching 
brief for the Museum; Mr. Wile was also 
there, holding no communication with Mr. 
Curtain; and in a corner of the room behind 
the hammerman’s rostrum, wearing an un- 
restrained smile, was a sunburnt man of mid- 
dle age, with a silk hat, a monocle and a 
bushy fair beard. To the picture dealers of 
London he was well known as Mr. Sinclair 
Campbell; some of the booksellers might 
have recollected the name as that of an in- 
frequent purchaser of classics through the 
post, but they were unacquainted with his 
face and took no notice of his presence. 

The morning’s proceedings, after a quiet 
beginning, were thrilling enough. Prices 
ran high; when the Saint Louis Book of 
Hours came on, the slight nods and faint 
syllables of the great Americans produced 
the effect of an artillery battle; by lunch 
time a hundred lots had gone, and tens of 
thousands had been spent, most of it by 
Mr. Ling, and most of the rest by the Major 
and Mr. Hopkins. There was a loud buzz 


124 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


of released chatter when the adjournment 
came and the principal buyers went off to 
fortify themselves with champagne for fur- 
ther plunges. Mr. Wile went with the rest 
down the stairs. Just outside he met Mr. 
Campbell, who took him affably to the next 
corner and then whispered in his ear: “It’s 
all right, my boy. I said you could go to 
five hundred if anybody smells a rat. But 
I find it amusing in there. I don’t care if 
it’s thousands. You can go on as far as you 
like. If it looks like breaking me, I shall 
take my hat off, and then you can stop. I 
shall be back at two-thirty.” 

He was. So was Mr. Curtain. Macken- 
zie Wile, after a gobble at a tea-shop, was 
back long before. Time, he found, was 
dragging intolerably now. He watched the 
clock crawl, and wondered if the sale would 
ever be resumed; he listened wearily to the 
jocular conversations of men who seemed 
to think the day a day like other days: he 
surprised one acquaintance who addressed 
him by answering with something very like 
curtness. ‘Well, I’m hanged,” thought the 
man, “‘it’s like being charged by a rabbit.” 
At last the auctioneer climbed again to his 
pulpit and his voice rang out announcing 
the next lot. Scattered voices, an inquiry, 
a few taps of the hammer, and then the 
same sequence in monotonous repetition. 


The Golden Scilens 125 


Mr. Curtain came back to his corner, and 
Mr. Campbell, replete and almost grinning, 
to his. More big lots turned up; there were 
prolonged encounters, and deep breaths were 
drawn as the giants advanced their bids, now 
in tens, now in fifties, now in hundreds, and 
once, for a wild half-minute, in thousands. 
The room grew dimmer; the lights were 
turned on; the end of the day’s business was 
approaching. Most of the general public 
gradually dispersed, and the Major and Mr. 
Hopkins, glutted, took their leave also. Mr. 
Ling, alone of the Americans, remained; but 
he had snapped the elastic over his note- 
book and looked rather like a man who was 
seeing something out; perhaps he wanted to 
watch the London booksellers, who had re- 
mained in force, hoping to pick up a few 
things towards the end. Lot 190 went for 
twenty-five shillings: the laconic diary of 
a French officer in the Seven Years’ War. 
Lot 191 fetched even less: some letters from 
Miss Anna Seward. As 193 drew near our 
poor Mackenzie felt like bursting; he tried 
to keep his face still and dared not catch 
any human eye. The moment came. The 
auctioneer held up a bundle; “No. 193, three 
domestic account books, one of them of the 
early seventeenth century.” An attendant 
took it from him and passed it down to the 
table, around which sat a dozen booksellers. 


126 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


They glanced at each book: two of them 
were patently late and dull, and the other 
was indecipherable, except for an occasional 
headline such as “For Ye Ague,” ““To Roste 
a Capon.” Hardly worth having on a day 
like this! “A pound?” suggested the auc- 
tioneer. No voice replied, as Mackenzie, 
with magnificent will-power, controlled him- 
self lest eagerness should breed suspicion. 
“Well, ten shillings,” said the auctioneer, 
sighing over the meanness and shortsighted- 
ness of mankind. 

“Ten,” broke out Mackenzie, in a voice 
so unintentionally loud that he could not 
help blushing. Somebody at the table 
flapped the parcel over again and nodded 
carelessly: “Fifteen shillings bid. A pound 
for 193. Twenty-five shillings bid.” Mac- 
kenzie’s rival glanced at him; he knew him 
and chanced it. “Two pounds,” he said. 
“Ten,” said Mackenzie. “Three pounds,” 
replied the other bidder, and now a wizened 
and spectacled dealer with a walrus mous- 
tache looked up from his calculations, and 
cut in with three pounds ten. ‘Four 
pounds,” continued Mackenzie. “Five,” 
said the first; then, as though involuntarily, 
a lay spectator at the back suddenly com- 
mitted himself to six, and looked sorry for 
it. “Seven,” mechanically proceeded Mac- 
_kenzie. 


The Golden Scilens 127 


“Wonder who he’s bidding for,” whis- 
pered Brooks of Oxford Street to his neigh- 
bour, for they both knew the limits of Wile’s 
purse. Mackenzie was unconscious of com- 
ment, and went on to nine pounds. 

It was at this point that Mr. Ling, who 
had been meditating, began to take notice. 
He had done very well, and felt like a little 
sport. How slowly these Britishers (for he 
always used that offensive term) were creep- 
ing up; how cautiously they schemed for 
this bit of old rubbish. Now was the op- 
portunity for a little jovial Napoleonism just ~ 
to oxygenise ’em. “Ten pound bid,” re- 
marked the auctioneer, scarcely able to 
conceal his astonishment; the astonishment 
broke through all his guards when, emphatic 
and nasal, the voice of the American rang 
out “Fifty.” 

Mr. Ling always stopped smiling when he 
made a joke; but almost everybody else 
laughed aloud as this monstrous extinguisher 
came down on the competitors. “No hope 
of a secretive purchase now,” was the expres- 
sion which Mr. Curtain read on Mackenzie’s 
resolute face: “The landslide has begun and 
I’m going full out.” “Sixty,” said Macken- 
zie; “A hundred,” rejoined Mr. Ling. The 
professionals looked bewildered. What had 
Wile found out? Was Ling merely coming 
in on spec.? or did he know too? One of 


128 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


them, unable to resist temptation, came in 
next with “a hundred and ten,” which Mac- 
kenzie capped with “a hundred and fifty,” 
and Mr. Ling with “two hundred.” The 
bidding had now emerged from its slow 
peregrination through obscure byways and 
was bowling down a broad boulevard in the 
full view of all. ‘Three hundred,” said 
Mackenzie. “Fifty,” said Ling, and then 
his humble rival, with a sharp snap, fired 
out “five hundred.” 

There was a loud rustle, and a noise like 
that which greets the ascension of fireworks. 
Mr. Ling paused: the joke was going too 
far; what was this darned old account-book 
anyway? But the challenge had been his 
and he did not like to be beaten. With a 
completely impassive face he broke all rec- 
ords by advancing in a leap to two thousand. 

Mackenzie stole a glance at Mr. Campbell. 
He saw with agony Mr. Campbell’s hands 
moving towards his hat, then with inexpres- 
sible relief observed Mr. Campbell to clutch 
both rims of it firmly and squeeze it down 
on his head, his eyeglass remaining firmly 
set and his white teeth showing through his 
beard. It was still all right. “Going,” an- 
nounced the auctioneer. ‘“Three thousand,” 
shouted Mackenzie Wile. Mr. Ling shook 
his head and stood up; the hammer came 
down with a smack; and the room broke into 


The Golden Scilens 129 


loud applause, as men always will in such 
places when they think somebody has given 
too much for something. Strangers slapped 
Mackenzie on the back; Mr. Ling himself 
then struggled through to him. 

“Well, boy,” he said with an admiring 
gaze, “I’m darned if I know what we were 
bidding for, but I’m glad you’ve got it.” 
The implied question was not answered; 
Mackenzie was preoccupied with getting his 
prize away. A deposit was asked for; a 
cheque was promptly written out by Mr. 
Campbell; a bank was telephoned to; and 
three men stole away to tea in Addison Road. 

“It was worth it,” smugly remarked Mr. 
Campbell as they parted later, “and remem- 
ber it’s a loan from me. The purchase is 
yours.” 

2 2 2 2 

Seven days later, after the first undirected 
curiosity had been forgotten, the booksellers 
of two continents were biting themselves 
with rage. 

_ All wars, all race-meetings, all debates, 
all prize-fights that first morning faded into 
nothingness as the posters, the headlines, the 
leading articles were unanimously devoted 
to the one great theme: the rediscovery, in- 
side what they picturesquely called “Ann 
Hathaway’s Diary,” of a scene from Hamlet 
in Shakespeare’s handwriting, the original 


130 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


MS., freely corrected. Cables flashed the 
news to all the zones; millionaires in Los 
Angeles telephoned agents in New York 
about it; ambassadors officially informed 
kings, still in bed; and the embattled profes- 
sors of Germany rejoiced as one man at the 
prospect of new pasture. Wile’s literary 
friends uproariously drank his health in pub- 
lic houses ;.and multitudes of more respecta- 
ble Englishmen thought it scandalous that a 
fellow like this Wile, not a business man at 
all, should make a fortune simply because 
of a great deal of undeserved luck and a 
little silly learning. 

This was the story, in summary, that they 
all read. Mackenzie Wile, the well-known 
critic and bibliographer (portrait, inset) was 
looking over the shelves at Hodgeby’s when 
his attention was arrested by a small volume 
of early Jacobean date in Old English script. 
The volume was a mixed collection of recipes 
for the table and for diseases, and domestic 
memoranda of one sort or another, a collec- 
tion of a kind commoner in a later age than 
in that. The writing was difficult to read, 
and had probably never been read since the 
first owner’s death; certainly Sir William 
Vernon would never have attempted to read 
it. Mr. Wile, a skilled paleographer, de- 
ciphered much of it and his curiosity was 
aroused by one or two dates, initials and 


The Golden Scilens 131 


family names—for the writer had sometimes 
put down the sources of her remedies as well 
as notes about birth and deaths. “Hall” and 
“Hart” and “Judith” were amongst those 
which first struck Mr. Wile. He might per- 
haps have finally laid the volume aside had 
he not noticed a word, faded, brown and 
Gothic looking, on the inside front cover. 
The covers, of vellum, had (as often hap- 
pened) been stiffened by sheets of old manu- 
script laid within them and covered with flap 
edges. Turning the book in his hand, Mr. 
Wile saw the bottoms of several words and 
one whole word obviously carried down from 
a line above. The word read “‘scilens” or 
“scileus.”’ Possibly other persons had exam- 
ined it that morning. If so, those who did 
not know Latin no doubt thought it Latin, 
and those who knew Latin no doubt thought 
it dog-Latin. Mr. Wile was better in- 
formed. He had for years studied Tudor 
handwriting. He was familiar with the 
More manuscript in the Museum and with 
the researches of Sir E. Maunde Thompson, 
Mr. Pollard and Mr. Dover Wilson. He 
had learned much from these scholars: “‘sic 
vos” (but this only in the T%mes and the 
Morning Post) “non vobis mellificatis apes.” 
And two pieces of knowledge of stupendous 
import leapt to his mind as he gazed at the 
word. The less significant was that Shake- 


132 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


b BON tb Maal “i ieee: A> Ip | 


speare’s “‘m’s,” ‘‘n’s” and “u’s” were always 
indistinguishable; the far more vital was that 
Shakespeare is the only man on record who is 
known to have spelt the word “silence” as 
“scilens.” Thus does it appear in the “‘More 
Addition” and thus in Mr. Justice Silence’s 
name in the quarto of Henry IV, Part 2. 
Staggered by his discovery, Mr. Wile (his 
furtive movements were conjecture since 
none had watched him) drew back the tough 
vellum and saw that the two preceding words 
were) restiis.7) 5 (Dherestvisisiiences i )bhe 
climax of Hamlet! Mr. Wile dared not dis- 
lodge the whole cover, but peeping in he saw 
enough to convince him that many more 
lines, some freely corrected, were there, and 
what looked like the ends of three separate 
attempts by Shakespeare to write his own 
name, on the margin, to his satisfaction. 

On this Mr. Wile boldly bid; he was sure 
of his ground. After the auction, in com- 
pany with expert friends, he took the cover 
to pieces, and found three separate whole 
leaves, covered with writing, all from Ham- 
let, on both sides. Several valuable emen- 
dations of the text had already been secured. 
The note-book itself had been demonstrated 
beyond all dispute to have been kept by 
Shakespeare’s wife. } 

“Tt is understood,” concluded all the news- 
paper “stories,” “‘that the manuscript will go 


The Golden Scilens 133 


to America.” They had no authority for 
this assertion, except the authority of com- 
mon sense, which should perhaps count. At 
all events their predictions were accurate. 
Mr. Curtain made a pathetic attempt to 
secure the Greatest Manuscript Treasure in 
the World for the British Museum. Mac- 
kenzie held out firmly, much to Mr. Cur- 
tains’ grief; the grief was intensified by the 
fact that Mr. Campbell, who had never en- 
joyed himself so much, openly encouraged 
Wile to hang on and get the most enormous 
price he could. “I’m extremely sorry,” said 
Wile, “I should like the manuscript to go 
to the Museum and IJ shan’t forget the serv- 
ice you did me before the sale; but I can’t 
sacrifice what you ask me to sacrifice.” For 
the British Government’s final offer of pur- 
chase price (in the form of an advance on 
the Museum’s whole book allowance for 
many years) was a beggarly hundred thou- 
sand pounds. And when this offer, which 
nearly drove half the officials in the Treas- 
ury to suicide, was made, Mackenzie already 
had in his hands eight telegrams from the 
United States, each offering half a million. 

The chaffering was conducted in full view 
of the whole world; Mr. Campbell liked it 
so, and Mackenzie, of whom his old self had 
been but an irresolute shadow, did not mind. 
At one million five hundred thousand six of 


(a) \| 


\ | 


134 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


the competitors had dropped out. Two re- 
mained. One was Mr. Thaddeus Harrison, 
the great New York financier, who for many 
years has been gathering together a library 
which he intends to bequeath to his old Uni- 
versity at Troy, N. Y.; the other, less cele- 
brated but rumoured prodigiously rich, was 
Mr. Paul Jones, of Florida, whose meteoric 
rise to wealth as a merchant prince in Nas- 
sau, the Bahamas, has received less than its 
due meed of attention. For five days these 
two in America and our two friends in Eng- 
land virtually lived in the cable offices. 
Special editions of the evening papers came 
out as each new bid was received. At first 
they crept up cautiously by hundred thou- 
sands at a time. “Harrison offers two 
millions,’ ran the poster for one edition; 
“£2,100,000 from Jones” ran the next. 
Then the pace of the offers was accelerated. 
At five millions there was some hesitation; at 
six both competitors seemed to have got new 
breath. Finally, when both had simultane- 
ously cabled bids of twelve million pounds, 
the limit seemed to have been reached. 
“Can’t do it,” was Mr. Jones’s last message 
in reply to a polite suggestion of a rise; and 
Mr. Harrison was equally clear with “Not 
another cent.” 

“What shall I do now?” Wile asked his 
bearded mentor. 


The Golden Scilens 135 


“Well, you will be pretty comfortable 
with the sum,” said Mr. Campbell, ‘“‘and the 
only thing you can do now is to close with 
the man who will pay quickest.” Another 
frenzied exchange of messages occurred, and 
in the end Mr. Harrison, with six millions 
down and another six in a month, was pro- 
claimed the victor. 

Mackenzie Wile, at the suggestion of his 
friend, handsomely chartered at his own cost 
a Cunard liner to take the manuscript across 
the Atlantic. As well he did, for Mr. Har- 
rison could now barely have paid a first-class 
return fare. He had to sell all his steel, all 
his shipping, all his rails, all his beef. The 
result in Wall Street was the worst panic 
of modern times. Crash after crash came; 
every kind of new issue had to be suspended; 
and from Oregon to Maine the little punters 
were ruined in tens of thousands. 

“T think,’ said Mr. Campbell to Mr. 
Wile, “you had better start buying in New 
York for all you’re worth.” He did; and 
we may yet live to see him offered the throne 
of Greece. 


V: BAXTERIANA 
I 


ME: HAWKE and her daughter Albinia 
amused themselves in their own way. 
They liked theatres, dances and supper- 
parties: Albinia, at her usually early and 
hasty dinner, babbled to Dad about hotels 
he had never entered and young men he had 
never seen: the family were on perfect terms, 
and neither his wife nor his daughter had 
ever asked Eustace Hawke to go to a dance. 
No: he would kiss them both, help them on 
with their wraps, give them his blessing as 
they scuttled out to the car, and then he 
would retire to the top of the house. There 
was his study, quiet, secluded, warm, with 
regiments of books, a comfortable armchair, 
a reading lamp, a box of cigars and a jolly 
log-fire. And there, the day’s work at his 
chambers put clean out of mind, he would 
settle down to his literary hobbies. 

The chief of these was the life and works 
of Richard Baxter; and there was certainly 
nothing abnormal in that. ‘Thousands of 
others shared it, lawyers, doctors, parsons, 
literary men, Pamir teat wherever the Eng- 

13 





Baxteriana 137 


lish language was spoken: and the fact that 
it gave him a masonic connection with so 
large and widespread a community was to 
Hawke one of its incidental charms. He 
liked the monthly dinners of the Baxter 
Club, the annual pilgrimages to Baxter’s 
birthplace, the quotations from Baxter that 
he heard on the lips of politicians and other 
commonplace people. He enjoyed the little 
monographs on aspects of Baxter, Baxter’s 
residences and travels, Baxter’s bibliography, 
Baxter at Cambridge, Baxter’s friends, which 
were continually peeping out from the Press 
in England and America. He liked contrib- 
uting occasionally to the odd little periodical 
called Baxteriana which an enthusiast at 
Nottingham conducted, and he liked getting 
letters about his contributions. Grubbing 
for unimportant and unprofitable facts in a 
great writer’s life was a relaxation after the 
hard and uncongenial work of the day, and 
miscellaneous reading was all the more amus- 
ing when anything he encountered, event or 
opinion, might be related to the one great 
theme of his hero. 

For, though Hawke was always reticent 
about his deepest thoughts, Baxter certainly 
was his hero. His interest in Baxter was 
more than that of a mere collector or critic; 
his hobby-horse was more than a toy. Like 
many men externally dry and worldly-wise, 


138 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


he had a deep faculty for reverence, and he 
revered the memory of Robert Baxter. To 
him Baxter was not merely a great man and 
a great writer, but a teacher whose sagacity 
never failed and a character the fine recti- 
tude of whose responses could never be ques- 
tioned. ‘Though Baxter had died before 
Hawke was born, he felt that he knew and 
loved him better than any human being. He 
expanded and mellowed in the society of 
his Baxterian cronies, for he knew that they 
shared his feelings. Often, when he was 
sitting by himself, some phrase in Baxter’s 
essays or letters, humorous and humane, or 
magnificently resolute in its clear morality, 
would make him rest his book on his knee, 
and stare with a rapt expression into the 
fire. He was thus engaged, one foggy eve- 
ning in November, when there came a knock 
at the door. “Damn!” he said under his 
breath; but aloud, “Come in!” 

The parlourmaid entered. “Mr. Atkins 
is below, sir, and would like to see you.” 

“Why on earth didn’t you bring him up?” 
asked Mr. Hawke, a little roughly. 

Edith flushed: “I told him I would see if 
you were in, sir,”’ she said. 

“I’m sorry, Edith,’ said Mr. Hawke. 
“Quite right. Bring him up.” 

Mr. Hawke glanced at the whisky tray 
and resigned himself to a spoiled evening. 


Baxteriana 139 


Atkins was, no doubt, the son of an old 
friend, and he wished him well at the Bar. 
It was also true that he had told the boy 
to come in whenever he liked in the evenings; 
but why would people take polite remarks 
so literally? Three visits in three months 
was absurdly excessive on the part of a youth 
who had nothing in common with him, and 
who did not even seem to enjoy himself 
when he came. Footsteps approached up 
the stairs. Aknock. “Mr. Atkins.” There 
stood that superior and not very able young 
man, with his smooth fair hair, his small 
fair moustache, his expression, half sulky, 
half supercilious. “Come in, Atkins,” said 
the host, “I’d been hoping you might drop 
ins: 

Mr. Atkins condescended to a whisky. 
Once more it was not clear why he had come, 
though he surely must like to come; once 
more Mr. Hawke took pains to make him 
talk. He asked him about his work; he had 
got one or two small cases on circuit, but his 
hopes, fears and ambitions were unfathom- 
able. Questions about his family educed the 
usual answer: “Oh, they’re all right as far as 
I know.” Questions of the gossipy kind 
about people elicited two kinds of answer. If 
he knew the person mentioned, he said, “Oh, 
yes, I know him,” as though that dealt with 
that. If he did not know the person, he 


140 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


said, “No, I don’t know him,” thereby dis- 
missing the person, possibly very eminent 
and old enough to be his grandfather, into 
some limbo of insignificant shades. “He is 
my guest,” reflected Mr. Hawke, after he 
had had once more to abandon the kindly 
hypothesis that Mr. Atkins was shy in the 
presence of an older man. 

It was now late in the evening, and Mr. 
Hawke had begun to hope that his young 
exquisite was about to go, when Mr. Atkins 
saw fit to notice the book which his host had 
laid open, face downwards, on the little table 
between them. ‘“‘Ah, Baxter,” he remarked, 
with a slight lift of the eyebrows, ‘“a nice 
lot he was.” 

“He happens to be my favourite author,” 
replied Mr. Hawke, with some coldness, very 
deliberately knocking a long ash from his 
cigar. 

‘A pleasant customer, all the same,” said 
Mr. Atkins. “Perhaps you haven’t seen 
those letters?” 

“T think,” said Mr. Hawke stiffly, “that 
I have read every letter of his that has ever 
been printed.” | 

“Oh, I don’t think the ones I mean will 
be printed,” said Atkins, with a wintry smile. 
“There might,” he remarked, with a faint 
titter, “be trouble with the police.” 

Mr. Hawke sprang round in his chair: 


Baxteriana 141 


“What the devil do you mean by it?’ he 
said angrily. 

The young man appeared a little alarmed. 
“T didn’t mean to shock you, sir,” he said, 
dropping his affectation of impassivity, “but 
I didn’t know you would take it so seriously. 
I didn’t suppose you’d know really. It’s 
only a week or two ago that Bertie Fynes 
got hold of them.” 

“Them? What?” 

“The letters,’ said the youth, a little 
pleased at the sensation he had made, though 
surprised at its nature. He relapsed into his 
own phraseology. ‘“Thick isn’t the word for 
them. [ve never seen anything like them. 
What an old hypocrite!” 

Hawke rose to his feet, suppressing his 
heat with difficulty. He stood with his back 
to the fire and looked sternly down at his 
guest. “I suppose you are hardly to be ex- 
pected to know,” he said, “that you are de- 
faming the memory of one of the noblest of 
men, and I won’t suggest that you are con- 
sciously telling a revolting falsehood. I can 
only presume that Fynes has imposed on you 
with a disgusting practical joke.” 

Atkins flushed, began a sentence angrily, 
checked himself, looked at his feet and said, 
surlily: “How did I know you were going 
to take it like this? Anyhow I’ve seen the 
letters.” 


142 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


“T didn’t say you hadn’t seen something,” 
retorted Hawke, “you’ve seen some filthy 
forgeries or other. I can’t think Fynes 
doesn’t know better, even if you don’t. It’s 
simply appalling when men of his standing 
lend themselves to things of this sort. I 
won’t hear another word about it.” 

Atkins’ mouth curled for an instant in an 
obstinate smile. He controlled himself. 
“Tm sorry,” he said, “let’s change the sub- 
ject. May I help myself to another drink?” 

Hawke nodded coldly. Then he too 
pulled himself together and resumed polite 
conversation. In another ten minutes the 
young man, with an exaggerated surprise as 
his eye caught the clock, professed an urgent 
obligation to go, and went. 


II 


Hawke’s anger simmered down. He told 
himself to forget the episode. It took all 
sorts to make a world; fools like Atkins and 
insensitives like Fynes; no great man’s repu- 
tation had escaped foul aspersions from his 
degraded inferiors, and even Baxter, unsul- 
lied though his memory had for so long ap- 
parently been, could not hope to escape the 
general fate. He invited such attack less 
than most eminent men; his honesty was so 
evident, his noblest words and acts were 


Baxteriana 143 


expressed with such humour and humility, 
he was so manly, so hearty, so sociable, so 
tolerant to weaknesses that he did not share, 
that the most vicious and jealous had been 
constrained to let him alone. He could not 
be expected to escape altogether, but slander 
against Baxter bore its own contradiction on 
the face of it, and the best thing his devotees 
could do was to let it alone, dismissing it 
with the brief frank contemptuous descrip- 
tion that would have contented Baxter him- | 
self had he heard it. His whole life was 
on record in Pickersgill’s great biography, 
a life of public service, of innocent private 
enjoyment, of deep spiritual experience, in 
which for months at a time every hour of 
the great humanist’s waking existence could 
be counted and shared. The aspersion was 
as absurd as it was monstrous; whatever rec- 
ord came to light Baxter could never be 
shamed. A vision of the rugged, kindly old 
face, so familiar in a hundred portraits, came 
back to Hawke, as he mused by his dying 
fire. Yes, it was preposterous. If Fynes 
was hardly capable of so vile a fraud him- 
self, he must have a morbid side to him, 
hitherto unsuspected, which, in this regard, 
had betrayed him into a gullibility equally 
uncharacteristic of him. Some low creature 
had imposed on him with a forgery for the 
sake of getting money out of him. Hawke 


144 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


went to bed; the family would come in later. 
Several times that night he woke up. 


III 


Yet Fynes was an intelligent, an unusu- 
ally acute, man; a man less likely than most 
to be taken in, as shrewd as he was self- 
controlled. The thought kept on recurring 
to Mr. Hawke during the few days that fol- 
lowed Atkins’ call. He would impatiently 
thrust it aside and then it would return, like 
a creeping spider that a man brushes off his 
clothes. When he was hard at work in his 
chambers, in pauses of the conversation at 
family meals, in bed especially when all was 
quiet except for the passing cabs: it returned 
again and again, with unpleasant insistence. 
In the daytime it was comparatively easy to 
deal with; it could be ignored. At night, 
when the imagination will pursue strange 
paths and almost any wild horror seems pos- 
sible in a universe so vague and so dark, it 
would not be driven away. The first time 
that an inner voice whispered to Mr. Hawke: 
“Suppose it is all true?” his flesh crept, his 
hair tingled, and he reproached himself in 
an agony of shame. The voice came again 
and again, insinuating like the serpent in the 
garden, extending the sphere of its corrup- 
tion like the maggot in the apple, until he 


Baxteriana 145 


had become so accustomed to it that he be- 
gan to reflect upon its argument, each time 
going farther and farther before abusing 
himself as a beast and roughly pushing his 
thoughts away. Suppose it was all true? 
Might it not be all true? Had not every 
man’s nature unexplored depths? Was any 
man’s life really known to his fellows? Had 
we not all things to hide? Wasn’t it pos- 
sible that every one of the friends whom 
he most admired led a secret life which was 
concealed beneath an open countenance and 
a facade of morality and good works? 
Could he swear that in any single case there 
was no furtive indulgence which would hor- 
tify the world if exposed, that in any cup- 
board there was no skeleton? Were not 
men such enigmas that anything might be 
true about them? had he not heard hushed- 
up stories about some of the most reputable? 
Might there not be reserves behind the con- 
fessions of even the most candid of them, 
a St. Augustine or a Rousseau, depths beyond 
depths? Was not the brute in every man 
tugging at the chain? Who could promise 
that it should never break its bars, never 
escape for some terrible excursion? Again 
and again the questions returned. He had 
thought he knew everything there was to 
be known about Baxter; he would have 
gone bail for Baxter even had every other 


146 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


“worthy” on the roll come to the test and 
failed. Yet could hebe sure? Baxter might 
have gone through seventy years of life con- 
cealing the evil side of his nature; many of 
his moods of depression might be traceable 
to that, much of his confident judgment of 
others to a perverted desire to compensate in 
a way, for his own derelictions. Suppose 
he were bad all through; that all his toler- 
ance of the sinner as well as all his intoler- 
ance of the sin was the fruit of a devilish 
irony which none had ever penetrated, a 
sustained mocking joke which he never al- 
lowed any one to share! MHawke’s mind 
groped through endless dank corridors full 
of bats and crawling things; then retreated 
in horror at its own ill pursuits. One page 
from Baxter’s essays, one sentence from his 
recorded conversation, one recollection of the 
eyes and voice and gestures that were as 
familiar as those of a living friend, and the 
thing seemed impossible again. 

Hawke grew more and more unhappy. 
His life was poisoned. He cursed Atkins 
for breaking in on his peace; he cursed Fynes 
for a gloating fiend; he cursed himself for 
a vacillating traitor. Yet no sooner had he 
called himself a traitor than the quiet voice 
resumed its acid argument: “No, not a 
traitor, a coward. You think it may be true, 
and you won't face it.” He would reply 


Baxteriana 147 


that the mere assent to an investigation of 
so foul a charge was treachery to his hero’s 
memory; Baxter himself would never have 
persuaded himself thus or wavered thus in 
an old allegiance. ‘“‘Sophistry, sophistry,” 
came the reply, reiterated until he had no 
longer the strength to resist it; “you know 
in your heart that you are deceiving your- 
self, that you are being a coward for com- 
fort’s sake.” 

About a week after the beginning of his 
trouble this word ‘‘comfort” came so clearly 
into his head that he could not help a grim 
smile. For if he was a coward for com- 
fort’s sake, it was a poor sort of comfort he 
was now enjoying. He was both miserable 
and restless. He could not work properly, 
read properly or sleep properly; he was 
brusque and distracted in conversation, and 
at home he was so grumpy that his wife and 
daughter became seriously concerned about 
him, and began pertinaciously to urge him, 
directly and by elaborate hints, to take a hol- 
iday, which increased his irritability. He 
answered them with transparent falsehoods: 
there was nothing wrong with him, there was 
nothing annoying him, a man might be al- 
lowed to think about his work, and so on. 
They could not drive him; but in the end 
he drove himself. He could stand this un- 
certainty no longer, an uncertainty which not 


148 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


only ruined his work but robbed him of his 
recreation: for, since the fateful evening he 
had been hardly able to look at his book- 
shelves, much less settle down to his favour- 
ite reading. One morning, when the sun 
shone, he went to his study before leaving 
home and wrote to Fynes a letter which he 
sent off by hand, asking for an immediate 
reply, to his chambers. “I may not be in 
to dinner to-night; I have to see a man,” he 
remarked to his wife as he left home. 

“Do look after yourself, Eustace,” she 
said impetuously; “I do wish you'd take 
things more easily. Anyhow, it'll be all 
right to-night. We're both going to Lady 


2 33 


Fouracres’. 


IV 


“Dear Fynes,”’ ran the letter, “I have just 
heard from Atkins that you possess a manu- 
script collection of Baxter’s letters. The ac- 
count Atkins gave me of them was so as- 
tonishing as to be incredible. I can only 
suppose that there is a mistake somewhere. 
I hope Atkins was not in error in telling me 
about them. But since he has told me, I feel 
that I must, if you will allow me, see them. 
I am, as you may know, a close student of 
Baxter’s life and works; and I feel it is vital 
to me to clear up this most disquieting mys- 


Baxteriana 149 


tery. I could come round to your flat to- 
night if you are free.” The plunge had been 
taken; as he proceeded to the Temple Mr. 
Hawke was relieved, and relieved to find 
himself relieved. Reasoning had frequently 
failed him; something beyond reason now 
told him that he had done the right thing. 
For the first time for days he was able to 
work well and to eat a normal lunch. 
Fynes’s answer came, “By all means.” Mr. 
Hawke dined alone at Simpson’s, in the 
agreeable calm of a man who has acted upon 
an irrevocable decision, burnt his boats and 
landed on a firm, although unknown, shore 
from which return is impossible. He walked 
along the Embankment to the flat in West- 
minster, and, as he walked up the steps of 
the Mansions, was ashamed to feel a thrill 
of excitement which conscience tried to quell 
with a desperate “No: this shameful thing 
is not true.” 

Fynes received him in his luxurious study- 
drawing-room, the abode of a bachelor with 
a taste for Chippendale, French classics, old 
morocco and limited editions. “Delighted 
to see you,” he said, and proceeded at once, 
rather apologetically, to explain why he had 
never invited Hawke to see his Baxter treas- 
ures before. “Of course, I need scarcely say, 
Hawke, that in the ordinary way I should 
be only too charmed for you to see and make 


150 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


use of anything I happen to have. But I 
couldn’t help keeping these particular things 
dark. I’m not especially keen on blowing on 
people’s reputations, and I don’t especially 
enjoy hurting their admirers’ feelings. I 
knew how devoted you were to Baxter, and 
I didn’t want to upset you; besides these 
things, whoever had written them, would 
probably shock you. I, I am afraid, am 
rather case-hardened.” 

“That’s all right,” said Mr. Hawke, un- 
easily looking around, “I quite understand. 
And I hope you understand my motives in 
coming. The thing has got absurdly on my 
nerves and I simply must get rid of it.” 
His loyalty and his desire that the solid 
ground should not fail beneath him were re- 
sponsible for his next words. “I hope you 
won't mind my saying that I shall probably 
question their authenticity.” 

Fynes looked at him with eyes steady un- 
der their drooping lids, and mouth that tight- 
ened whimsically. “I doubt it,” he said, 
“their pedigree is perfect.” He walked toa 
corner by the door, knelt down, and began 
unlocking the lowest drawer of a dark ma- 
hogany cabinet. “I got them,” he said, 
“from Brooks of Oxford Street. He doesn’t 
usually deal in this sort of thing, but a great 
author is another matter. I take it you ad- 
mit that Brooks is straight?” 


Baxteriana 151 


“Yes,” replied Mr. Hawke, gulping 
slightly, and feeling at once a little sick and 
a little excited now that he was right on the 
verge. 

‘Well, he gave his guarantee, and I’ve 
gone into it pretty carefully myself. It may 
be astonishing, but I can tell you it’s all 
right.”” He rose with a portfolio, brought 
it over and put it on a small table in front 
of Hawke. Keeping his hand on the packet, 
he went on: “I need scarcely ask you whether 
you know Baxter’s handwriting?” 

Hawke looked him in the eyes with a 
spurious boldness. “I know it,” he said, “as 
well as my own. I know the papers of the 
day and their water-marks, and I know some- — 
thing about inks. I know where Baxter was 
at almost any date in his life. I also claim 
to know something about all his friends.” 

“T don’t think you know about this one,” 
remarked Fynes with a cynical little laugh. 
“Look at them yourself, and take your time 
about it.”’ 

Mr. Hawke examined the letters. They 
were a revelation. There was no question 
here of mere exuberant animality or jocular 
coarseness. It was like looking into the 
Bite oes 


152 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


Vv 


He walked home. His world had been 
shattered. For the first few minutes the 
excitement of discovery had been so great 
that he had almost enjoyed himself. Even 
now at moments the savage in him was 
elated when the thought came, “What a 
secret! Imagine the sensation if one told the 
world to-morrow.” By the time he reached 
his dark house the savage had savoured all 
he could of that imaginary thrill; there re- 
mained the civilised man ashamed at his own 
baseness, sorrow-stricken because of the de- 
struction of his idol, unable to see how he 
would ever reconstruct a world to live in, in 
revolt against the meanness and squalor of 
the whole human race, willing to believe 
anything of anybody, hopeless, wretched 
past despair. He lay awake in anguish all 
that night, turning or still on his back, his 
eyes sometimes shut, sometimes deliberately 
open to the glimmering window as a par- 
tial refuge from the nightmare of his own 
thoughts. Now and then the face of Baxter 
came back to him: sometimes the old face 
unchanged, sometimes a mask distorted with 
villainy, sometimes a new image with re- 
proach in its eyes, unjustly presenting itself 
considering what he had learned. Mr. 
Hawke thought of the collection of books in 


Baxteriana 153 


the room across the landing; the docketed 
Baxterian references; the half-completed 
papers; the files of Baxteriana, repository of 
the eager and innocent recreations of so 
many harmless people—if indeed anybody 
was harmless. What a monstrous monument 
to hypocrisy they had all built up! How 
they had imposed on the world with their 
ideal pictures of this hideous creature! 
With what fatuity they had taken him for 
granted! With what ease he had swindled 
them all into thinking that all good causes 
would be helped if they discovered who his 
maternal great-grandparents were and in 
what hotel at Chichester he had stayed dur- 
ing his one brief visit there! The night 
seemed endless; when he rose at last in the 
cold dawn_he was amazed at the face, drawn, 
white, hag-ridden, which confronted him in 
the glass. Daylight made things easier 
though; and after an early toast and coffee, 
he fled from the prospect of an inquisitive 
family, walked up Sloane Street to the Park, 
and with his overcoat well buttoned up, be- 
gan to stroll up and down by the Serpentine. 
It was a crisis; what should he do? Was it 
his duty to explode the vast deceit of the 
Baxter legend or was it not? Should he 
be a party to a colossal lie? or should he 
precipitate an exposure which would destroy 
the pastime of thousands, the living even of 


154 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


some, and be a powerful agent on behalf of 
a cynical and embittered philosophy of life? 
He had thought the crucial decision about 
duty had already been taken; but no, it was 
still in front of him. Through a thin mist 
a wintry sun touched with orange the slug- 
gish ripples of the lake; a grey gull drifted 
to and fro; the solitude and quietness grad- 
ually assuaged his trouble and induced a cer- 
tain resignation. Peace seemed worth hav- 
ing; even the illusion of stability better than 
a world all obvious quicksands. “Great is 
Truth and it shall prevail”; ““Let justice be 
done if the Heavens fall’’: with these two 
proverbs he had often fortified himself dur- 
ing a life of struggle, but this morning they 
had lost their force. He was fatigued; he 
envied those whose faith was undisturbed; 
“why trouble them?’ he asked himself. 
And arguments came to reinforce his incli- 
nation. If Baxter’s reputation was not a 
work of nature could it not be regarded as 
an ideal creation of Art? It expressed a 
dream of the race if not the achievement of 
Baxter. That figure, so loved and revered, 
had never lived in the world, but it had the 
existence of a grand statue, and to destroy 
it would be like shattering a statue to pieces 
because its lines had but a legendary basis. 
Why diminish the beauty in the world? or 
remove a consolatory lie that was only a 


Baxteriana 155 


lie in a sense? The passers-by grew more 
numerous. Mr. Hawke did not wish to at- 
tract attention by parading longer in Napo- 
leonic contemplation; he made a quick re- 
solve, stepped out for Hyde Park Corner, 
took a cab to the Temple, and rang Fynes up. 
Fynes was still in, no doubt at a late break- 
fast. “I say, Fynes,” said Mr. Hawke, “‘do 
you feel inclined to sell those letters?” He 
thought he heard a slight titter at the other 
end; it made him blush, but he was deter- 
mined to see the thing through. 

“Well,” came the answer, “as a matter 
of fact, I had been thinking of it already. 
Ive got an offer for them from America.” 

“We can’t do it over the telephone,” said 
Mr. Hawke resolutely; “T’ll come along and 
see you at once.” Then, without giving 
Fynes time to say that he was going out, 
he rang off. He called a cab in the Strand, 
and set off again for the scene of his last 
night’s ordeal. 

His mind was made up. He could not 
bear that the scoffers of the world should 
rejoice to find that Baxter also had disgraced 
himself. “Hypocrisy,” he remembered, “‘is 
the tribute that vice pays to virtue.” After 
all, it showed the superiority of virtue, and 
any tribute was better than none; why, he 
thought, with a wistful smile, should he in- 
tercept Baxter’s tribute, if that only meant 


156 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


a score for unashamed and unmitigated vice? 
Arrived at the flat, he found on Fynes’s face 
an expression of friendly interest. 

“Do you want these letters very badly, 
Hawke?’ he asked, “for, if so, ’m afraid 
youll have to pay through the nose for 
them.” 

“T will pay anything within reason,” said 
Hawke; and at the other man’s cold chaffer- 
ing he found reviving within himself some- 
thing of his old affection for Baxter, a de- 
sire to protect him maternally against a cruel 
sardonic world. 

“Tve been offered a very large sum by 
an American,” continued Fynes. “He wants 
them purely as a collector. I don’t know 
what your interest in them may be, but if, 
as I suspect, you want to suppress them, 
you've got to go rather a long way.” 

“To be frank, I do want to suppress 
them,” said Hawke; “I think they are abom- 
inable and ought to be suppressed. Can’t 
you see that?” | 

“Oh, yes, I can see it,” said Fynes, “and 
it may comfort you to know that my Ameri- 
can is the last man in the world to publish 
them. Half his pleasure would vanish if 
he hadn’t got the things to himself. He has 
offered me four thousand pounds for them: 
I need money, and it means a lot to me.” 

Hawke was dazed. Four thousand 


Baxteriana 157 


pounds! He began to confess inability to 
compete and then his gorge rose. What 
guarantee was there that the letters would 
not be vulgarly exploited? Ought not a 
self-respecting man to make any sacrifice 
rather than be beaten in a matter of this 
kind? Wouldn’t Baxter himself want him 
to have the courage of his convictions? he 
reflected automatically; then pulled himself 
together with the reminder that Baxter was 
a blackguard anda humbug. Four thousand 
pounds, though he made a good income, was 
half his savings; and he was a prudent man. 
But he suddenly saw red; he simply had to 
act; and, rather hoarsely, but still quietly, 
he said, “Tl give you five thousand if you'll 
hand over the manuscripts now.” 

“That’s good enough for me,” said Fynes. 

Mr. Hawke did not go back to his cham- 
bers. He went to his house and there he 
went to his study; the fire was not lit, but 
he lit it and nursed it to a blaze. He then 
opened his parcel and, without looking again 
at its contents, put them one by one on the 
flames and watched them shrivel. As the 
last curled up and calcined his heart light- 
ened, and he sighed: he was burning letters 
of Baxter’s, and it was impossible for the 
old love to be entirely uprooted. He fought 
down his pangs, turned, and looked at his 
shelves with alien eyes. 


158 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


VI 


Rumours got about; they were indignantly 
repudiated by Baxter’s champions; there was 
no evidence, and Baxter stands as high as 
ever he did. Mr. Hawke, however, found 
his occupation gone. He could pity Baxter 
now; he was not merely disgusted with him. 
But he committed his unfinished researches 
to the flames and he resigned his membership 
of the Baxter Society, without giving any 
explanation. They implored him to remain 
on if only as an honorary member; he weak- 
ened and assented. But nothing could re- 
vive his former enthusiasm; nobody else 
could minister to his tastes as Baxter had 
ministered to them; he avoided Baxterians 
and he found himself disinclined for any new 
literary hobby. The result was that one 
morning he suddenly announced to his wife 
and daughter that he would like to join them 
at the evening’s dance if they didn’t mind. 

They were overjoyed. So it is an ill wind 
that blows nobody any good. 


VI: THE LECTURE 
I 


SS ceee may make a man, in some de- 
gree, fat and complacent. Much public 
speaking may make him, often uncon- 
sciously, hypocritical, a fisher for laughs and 
cheers, a formulator of statements which he 
may once have thought to be true, but which 
in the end he makes without considering 
whether they are true or false. Literary 
artists and politicians are extremely liable 
to both dangers, and three young men, as- 
sembled in the quiet American bar of Bas- 
sano’s noisy restaurant, were agreed that both 
had enveloped Alfred Winter. They were 
all reviewers, and all trying to write, which 
is another matter. They were all keen and, 
naturally, lean; and they were bound to con- 
fess that Winter was getting fat, that his 
work was deteriorating, and that he was rap- 
idly becoming a systematic humbug. 

“Bound to confess” was the phrase; but 
they made the confession with varying meas- 
ures of reluctance. If John Bateson was 
even a little reluctant, the fact was not evi- 
dent. He was of the fierce and uncompro- 


160 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


mising sort—as indeed Winter himself had 
been in early youth—and would listen to 
no defence. He shook his black hair and 
scowled at his tumbler: “He’s a rotter,”’ he 
remarked, “and you both know it. If the 
truth’s to be told, I don’t suppose even his 
early stuff was as good as we used to think 
it. Anyhow he’s sold himself. And,” he 
added, with an intonation of deep contempt, 
“he’s got the price.” 

“We could do with some of it,” sighed 
Hugh Macintosh, “but I’m afraid it’s true. 
It’s an awful pity; he might have been a 
greater man than you think, Bateson. He’s 
certainly gone west now. It’s almost in- 
credible that a few years ago we all of us 
took his opinion for gospel.” 

“Speak for yourself,” said Bateson, 
bluntly, turning his dark, strong face to the 
speaker, “I didn’t. I could always see the 
man would go the way of all charlatans.” 

The third was a young man with pince- 
neZ, a sensitive thin face, innocent blue eyes 
and mouse-coloured hair. He had been 
thoughtfully leaning on the bar and kicking 
the brass footrail, and he now looked up, 
framing his lips for a protest. 

“I suppose you’re going to defend him, 
Emery,” said Bateson. 

“You're ‘so extreme,” said’ Hmery.- “It's 
really too absurd to say that he’s never done 


The Lecture 161 


good work, or that he doesn’t write well even 
now. I admit he’s a bit thin nowadays, and 
tries to go for a bigger public than the Lord 
meant him for; and I’m afraid he’s lost his 
sense of humour about himself. But I’m 
sure he doesn’t know he’s a charlatan.” 
“Which he is,” said Bateson. “Did you 
ever hear one of his precious lectures?” 
“Oh, of course I have, but you will be 
so unfair. Anyhow I’m off. I said I’d have 
an early tea with him this afternoon.” 
“Take care,” laughed Macintosh, “or 
you'll be becoming a little humbug too.” 


II 


The conversation had meant more to 
Adrian Emery than to the others, who, by 
the time that he had walked the hundred 
yards to Charing Cross, were probably dis- 
puting about something else. Winter’s fig- 
ure as he had first known it hovered before 
his eyes as he made his way through the 
trafic towards Piccadilly. Six years ago 
Winter had only been a celebrity of sorts, 
not an oracle revered by all the half-read 
people in the country. He was a charming 
figure then, hearty and gay, with his clear, 
twinkling eyes, quick laugh, and delightful 
habit of equal conversation with the hum- 
blest and youngest. Slightly unconven- 


162 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


tional, too; an “extremist’’ rather feared and 
frowned upon by the elderly and respectable. 
His loose tweed suit, pink tie and wide soft 
hat were worn as though he liked them, and 
had forgotten he had them on; he was nat- 
ural, free of speech, witty and daring, at the 
same time sensible. Then he had found, by 
imperceptible degrees, a market for his wit 
and sense and, in restricted quantities, his 
audacity. It had been a rapid progress: first 
dramatic criticism, then criticism of pictures, 
then two picaresque books, half story, half 
amusing commentary on modern thought and 
life, and then a successful play. The play, 
which had a setting of international politics, 
was a great success. To his old associates 
it was the beginning of the end; to his new 
the end of the beginning. He had arrived: 
and in two years no Academy banquet was 
complete without him. Insensibly, as it 
seemed to Emery, who had a year or two 
back seen him almost daily, he had got softer, 
more easily satisfied both with himself and 
with things in general. There was a Winter 
legend: he did his best to live up to it, and 
found it no difficult task. He had begun to 
be applauded as a constructive critic of mod- 
ern life: the applause gave him a keener 
taste for construction: and apparently the 
vaguer and more platitudinous he became 
the heartier was the response from the pub- 


The Lecture 163 


lic. To-day in any town in England might 
have been found half-a-dozen persons will- 
ing to lecture on the work and influence of 
Alfred Winter, and any of them with such 
a subject might count on an audience: he 
was indubitably superior yet comprehensi- 
ble to all. All this, as Adrian Emery walked 
to Winter’s club, he recalled and faced more 
frankly than he would ever consent to do in 
conversation. He contemplated, also, cer- 
tain other disagreeable symptoms: the ele- 
ment of dandyism which had crept into Win- 
ter’s négligé, his fondness for dropping out, 
as it were by accident, information about 
invitations he had received, causes that had 
welcomed his assistance, and prices he had 
been offered by obsequious managers and 
magazines. Winter even, Emery thought 
with a blush, showed signs of a still un- 
worthier form of vanity, nonchalantly pa- 
trading his eminent acquaintances, referring 
to venerable mandarins of literature, poli- 
tics and society as Dick and Arthur. It was 
a dreadful pity, in spite of Bateson. Emery 
was convinced that a very good man was go- 
ing wrong. 

' He made his resolution. The truth was 
becoming too widely realised in the only 
quarters that mattered. Young as he was, 
and obscure, he would do a friend’s unpleas- 
ant duty even at the risk of a breach. He 


164 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


must let Winter know, delicately or brutally, 
what was happening to him, what his friends 
feared and what delighted his enemies. 

It took an effort, but he did it. Winter 
began by arguing: he put up a case for the 
interviews and the films, and hotly denied 
that his writing had grown more slipshod. 
“As for these lectures,” said Emery, “why 
on earth do it? You cannot possibly put 
your best into them. They are all just vague 
uplift.” 

Winter did not deign to reply. The words 
stung. The parting was strained. “I have 
a big lecture on at Mulcaster to-night,” said 
Winter, coldly. 

“What’s the subject?” asked the distressed 
Emery, trying to pretend that things were 
the same as they had been. 

“Oh, something or other about Art. 
Good-bye.” 


Iil 


The city of Mulcaster is one of the largest 
in North Central England. It boasts, liter- 
ally if inexplicably, a large number of ware- 
houses, cobblestones, trams and inhabitants, 
and it rather piques itself on its ability to 
show London how to do things. The ex- 
presses take three hours to get there from 
whichever of several stations you choose; the 


The Lecture 165 


first-class carriages are very comfortable, and 
an early dinner may always be obtained on 
board. Alfred Winter secured a carriage to 
himself, tipped the attendant to bring him 
a tumbler and a water-bottle, produced a 
silver whisky flask, a writing-block and a 
fountain pen from the pockets of his heavy 
fur coat, hung up the coat and put up his 
feet, and prepared to meditate on his ora- 
tion for the evening. He had done this sort 
of thing often enough; there was an hour 
and a half before the first dinner, and there 
would be a short time afterwards. He had 
no need to bother about changing, as the 
tweeds and the pink tie, though they might 
have been resented on any one else, were 
too generally regarded as a necessary part 
of his literary and ethical equipment to 
be abandoned in favour of evening dress. 
Plenty of time. And anyhow what did it 
matter? In earlier days he had felt nervous 
without full notes and was sometimes inef- 
fective even with them. But he knew now 
his gifts of improvisation, and memory dis- 
euised as improvisation; he knew his audi- 
ences; and he knew, to-night as most nights, 
his theme. He had lectured in Wales, Dev- 
onshire, Birmingham, Yorkshire, London, 
Oxford, Cambridge and more places than he 
could remember on “The Primary Function 
of Art.” In the quite old days, when subur- 


166 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


ban and college literary societies provided 
him with the best platforms he could get, 
he had frequently read papers on that sub- 
ject, and the lecture had developed with 
time, as also had his lecture on ““The Place 
of Fiction in the Modern State,’ and that 
on “The Drama.” He still liked, if he was 
not too tired or lazy, to devote a little 
thought to his subject before speaking, and 
to make a few notes, new if on the old lines. 
But even these were not, at a pinch, neces- 
sary. Some of the argument might be miss- 
ing, some of the chief points lost; but he 
never failed, he knew, to remember enough 
of the more elevated passages and the more 
successful quotations and the more success- 
ful impertinences to carry him through. 
There were even, ready to leap into the 
breach at need, a number of trained veteran 
jokes which could always be relied on to 
cover a temporary breakdown in the main 
movement, and turn failure into success; he 
had learned the whole art of speaking slowly 
and with great emphasis whilst he was try- 
ing to think of the next thing he ought to 
say; he knew that with the lights around, 
the table at his hand, rows of eager faces 
in front of him, and the stimulating sounds 
of applause in his ears, he could always rely 
on himself to produce the requisite amount 
of words and gestures, however bored and 


The Lecture 167 
empty he may have felt right up to the end 


of the chairman’s inane introductory eulogy. 
So, leisurely sipping and not very much con- 
cerned, he settled down with his white paper 
and his pen. 

He made a few idle marks; then he looked 
out of the window for a while at the autumn 
landscape, soft under a dove-coloured sky; 
then he fell to drawing vague faces on his 
paper. “Why on earth do I do it?’ he 
muttered to himself as he mixed a stiff 
whisky; “Oh damn!” he exclaimed five min- 
utes later, as he mixed another. ‘“This’ll be 
the last anyhow,” he concluded with reso- 
lution, and fell so grimly to the making of 
notes that he took no notice of the summons 
to dinner, the falling of twilight, the turn- 
ing on of the lights. The train groaned 
and stopped: “Harley,’’ a dim station, rat- 
tling cans, rain flicking the window in front 
of a melancholy lamp. It was the last stop 
before Mulcaster. He looked through his 
notes again, and then deliberately tore them 
up into small pieces and scattered them on 
the floor. “I shan’t need them,” he said, 
listening to his own voice loud above the 
rattling of the wheels, “I’m in the mood. 
Id better let it come as it will.” The rat- 
tling became violent, stations flew by in 
rapid sequence, then there was a slowing 
down and a grating: lights, a broad hall, the 


168 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


white steaming of many engines, voices, a 
row of porters, the stop. He got out with 
his bag, and two men in glistening wet over- 
coats ran up and pressed him by the hand. 


IV 


They were the President and Secretary of 
the Federation of Literary Societies which 
had organised the meeting; damp but eager 
both. The President, Mr. Maxwell, was 
head of a secondary school; he wore spec- 
tacles, a drooping moustache and a soft hat. 
He was introduced by the Secretary, Mr. 
Archibald Jump, with whom Winter had 
corresponded; Mr. Jump wore a bowler, and 
had a clean-shaven intelligent face and an 
anxious smile. They fought politely for 
Winter’s bag, and hurried him down the 
misty platform, singing in antiphony. 

“T hope you had a good journey, Mr. Win- 
ter.) 

“This is a great pleasure.’ 

“We have all been looking forward to it.” 

“It’s a wet night, but they’ll turn out for 
you.” 

“We've had to get the Central Hall; St. 
Andrew’s wasn’t big enough.” 

“The Lord Mayor is going to take the 
chair.” | 

“How you scored over Gilbert Hughes in 


The Lecture 169 


that letter. We all laughed about it here.” 

“T have every book you have written, Mr. 
Winter.” 

“We had Mr. Hughes here in the spring. 
He didn’t go down well with our people.” 

“What do you think of George Hawk- 
shaw’s new novel?” 

“Mary of our teachers are using your last 
book in the schools.” 

“You will have a great many of the teach- 
ers there to-night.” | 

“T think you know Mrs. Jones of Wigan. 
She asked me to tell you how sorry she was 
that she wouldn’t be able to get over for 
your lecture.” 

But, as Winter grunted or made no reply, 
the enthusiasm diminished, the song died 
away. They courteously put him in a cab, 
ar.d did their best with an occasional timid 
sentence in the darkness. Winter was 
moody, answered abruptly, and gazed out 
of the window at the lamp-lit mist and the 
passing vehicles, Moody; well, it was 
hardly strong enough. Great writers are 
pardonably eccentric, but this was over the 
border. The same thoughts coiled out of 
the minds of both the worthy officials. Win- 
ter was worse than moody; he seemed a little 
mad, and he—well, he had been drinking. 

A gloomy journey, but they turned into a 
Square, and there were the broad steps of 


170 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


the Hall and people swarming up them. 
Mr. Maxwell, Mr. Jump, and Winter with 
them, went round through a side door and 
found the Lord Mayor, eight o’clock having 
struck, in a dismal little waiting-room, chaf- 
ing at their delay. Introductions were hur- 
ried through; a corridor was traversed; and 
the four of them broke upon the platform of 
a vast hall, crowded floor and gallery. The 
Lord Mayor took the central seat, Alfred 
Winter sat, still looking very sombre, on his 
right, and the President and Secretary, un- 
comfortable in so public a position, endeav- 
oured to be unobtrusive on chairs to the ex- 
treme right and left of this central group. 
The Lord Mayor rose. He hemmed. He 
spoke of the distinguished visitor. He 
hemmed again. He spoke of Art. He 
hemmed again. He spoke, amid general ap- 
plause, of the progressive spirit of Mulcas- 
ter, and hemmed for the last time. He then 
called upon Mr. Alfred Winter, the distin- 
guished dramatist, critic and publicist, to 
deliver the address to which they had all so 
eagerly been looking forward. 

Winter looked at his feet, rose with a men- 
acing air, walked past the reading desk that 
had been prepared for him, and put one hand 
ferociously in his pocket.. There he stood, 
the figure already well known in caricature. 
The crowd was thrilled and hushed, but Mr. 


The Lecture 171 


Maxwell and Mr. Jump felt ill at ease, they 
knew not why. He began to speak. “My 
Lord Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,” he be- 
gan, “I fear that my address to-night will 
not be precisely what you expect, but it may 
be” (he could not get rid of his fluency) 
“that some, at least, of you will think that 
I was wise in diverging a little from the 
theme to which I am nominally to devote 
myself.” There was a rustle. The Lord 
Mayor looked intelligently around and then 
smirked at his hands. Mulcaster was to get 
something out of the ordinary, an honour 
which, after all, was only her due. The 
whole audience was agog. This was one of 
Winter’s characteristic surprises. He was 
living up to his reputation. 

“We are assembled to-night,” said Win- 
ter, in a clear but slightly harsh voice, “‘to 
consider the subject of the Primary Func- 
tions of Art. It sounds very important. 
There has just been an earthquake in China 
in which 100,000 people have perished, of 
whom a half were roasted to death. We are 
considering the Primary Functions of Art. 
There seems to be a chance of another great 
European War. We are considering the Pri- 
mary Functions of Art. In this city, as in 
others, there are at this moment multitudes 
of people, men and women, who are desper- 
ate through poverty, sweated and unem- 


172 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


ployed. We are considering the Primary 
Functions of Art. We have all had a good 
meal, and we can forget these things for a 
while. We know they exist; but we find 
the Primary Functions of Art more amusing. 
Platitudes about Art are more amusing; and 
I freely admit that I could provide you with 
them as I have provided many audiences be- 
fore.” Expectancy was on tip-toe. Winter 
was in one of his bold moods. ‘They were 
to have him at his best. 

“Well,” he went on, “you are not to take 
me as underrating the importance of Art. I 
have talked a good deal of well-fed cant 
about it in my time. I began by meaning 
what I said; and I am honestly convinced 
that much that I said, though I do not claim 
that it was new, was right. Art is impor- 
tant, it 1s symptomatic, and a civilisation 
which does not live by it is doomed. But 
it must be at least five years since I gave a 
minute’s hard thought to that or any other 
subject; one can get along with cheap sub- 
stitutes for thought just as well. I have 
been a popular humbug, as most so-called 
thinkers and leaders of opinion are, partic- 
ularly if they habitually lecture.” 

It was a startling opening. Even Winter, 
whose wisdom was usually so delightfully 
mixed with whimsicality, was not expected 
to go quite so far. The hall, packed with 


The Lecture 473 


people, was absolutely silent, except for a 
few slight laughs which were angrily hushed. 
The Lord Mayor looked fogged and inclined 
to sleep, anxiety was written on the features 
of Mr. Maxwell, Mr. Jump wondered if and 
how Winter would ever extricate himself 
from such a beginning. Smiles could be seen 
here and there on the faces of a few flippant 
who enjoyed any kind of surprise; Winter, 
who usually felt his audiences very surely 
and was very clever with them, seemed to 
make no endeavour to keep in touch. There 
was a lady in the front row, beaming with 
delight; the more he scowled, the more she 
beamed. Perhaps she had heard truth for 
the first time in her life, had relished it, and 
had suddenly acquired a morbid passion for 
more. Such a face, on another occasion, 
might have attracted Winter’s gaze; on this 
he merely loured stubbornly out towards the 
body of the hall, his head and arms as nearly 
motionless as was compatible with loud and 
determined speech. 

“For what,” he went on, “is this sort of 
lecture? There may be something to be said 
for informative lectures or acknowledged 
‘turns’ by Polar explorers, astronomers and 
honest professional entertainers. You don’t 
learn as much from the best of them as you 
might from an hour’s reading, but if you 
are too lazy to read you may learn some- 


174 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


thing from such lectures; and anyhow you 
may regard them as a legitimate amusement. 
But my sort of lecture is different. I don’t 
come here with facts and I don’t admit to be 
merely selling my personality. I am sup- | 
posed to be a missionary with a high calling. 
I desire to throw light for you on the highest - 
aspects of life, and you are craving for what 
I can give you. I have, it is supposed, come 
among you for the mission’s sake, in order 
that you might share the enjoyments, spirit- 
ual and esthetic, that I have, in order that 
others may perceive certain moral issues as 
clearly as I do myself. I may tell you that 
that assumption, which it is usual for both 
parties on these occasions to make, is an ab- 
solute lie!” 

There was a loud indignant murmur, 
which completely overbore the giggles. Mr. 
Jump stared feverishly at Mr. Maxwell. 
Mr. Maxwell made a movement and then 
checked himself. The Lord Mayor looked 
startled. Winter assumed a commanding at- 
titude, and the audience, not wishing to be 
precipitate, relapsed into quietude. “I am 
speaking,” he said, ‘‘for myself alone, though 
I fear that everything I say applies to many 
besides myself. I am not suggesting that all 
such lecturers are humbugs, though most of 
them are certainly wasting their time while 
they are on the platform, especially if they 


The Lecture 175 


speak from notes or impromptu. The solem- 
nity of Ruskin, the simple-minded enthusi- 
asm of William Morris, were probably not 
assumed, though they undoubtedly said all 
they had to say more effectively in print 
than in public speech. But so far as I my- 
self am concerned I may say that I simply 
don’t know why I have come here to-night.” 

A faint hope dawned in the breast of Mr. 
Maxwell and Mr. Jump, who sat nervously 
stroking their chins; there was a rustling of 
whispers in the audience as those who knew 
all about Winter’s cleverness told their puz- 
zled friends to wait and see what would come 
next. Slowly and resonantly he went on 
again. “I do not honestly know,” he said 
in tones that rang clearly to the back of the 
far high gallery, “why I have come to Mul- 
caster, and this audience to-night. I knew 
well—or rather I thought I knew—when I 
left London this afternoon, what I was go- 
ing to do when I got here. I knew I should 
be welcomed by an eager crowd of people; 
and I intended to give them such a lecture, 
indeed the very same lecture, as I had often 
delivered to such crowds before. There was 
a certain, not at all original, skeleton argu- 
ment which may be found in many men’s 
books, and which I daresay is as good as most 
arguments. There was a certain amount of 
illustration, a good deal of picturesque pad- 


176 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


ding, certain jokes that I have frequently 
(always with apparent spontaneity) made, 
and a rather poignant peroration which I 
could, if supported, deliver on my head, or, 
if hypnotised, in my sleep. I should have 
appeared earnest, but I should have been 
cold-bloodedly acting; I should have ap- 
peared spontaneous, but I should have been 
performing psychological experiments that I 
knew by heart, treating you, quite rightly, 
as the precise replica of a hundred other 
easily handled crowds.” They murmured 
again. “But why,” he proceeded, “did I 
come? It wasn’t, certainly, from sheer de- 
votion to your welfare. I wish you well, 
but I would not put myself out for you. 
I may often appear good-humoured and 
kindly, but I am really thoroughly selfish; 
and at this moment I might be sitting com- 
fortably in my house enjoying good company 
or writing something very lucrative, instead 
of standing on a platform in an ugly indus- 
trial town to which I said I would come to 
deliver a lecture on the Function of Art. 
Why did I come then?’ 

Loud cries of “Yes, why?” came from the 
gallery, and in two places in the hall scuffles 
broke out which caused widespread commo- 
tions. Sporadic shouts of “Sit down!” 
“Shut up!” “Go back to your home!” 
“Disgraceful!” were audible, and a man 


The Lecture 177 


with an umbrella began approaching the 
platform up the central passage between the 
seats. The Lord Mayor, proud of his fa- 
mous talent for keeping meetings in hand, 
rose and beat with his fist on the table. The 
water-glass fell off; there was an involuntary 
laugh; order was restored. “I must beg 
you,” said the Lord Mayor, “ladies and gen- 
tlemen, to hear Mr. Winter out. Some of 
you may feel, perhaps justly, that he has 
been unnecessarily provocative. But we 
must remember that he is our visitor, and 
that there are those who have paid for their 
seats and who desire to hear what further 
Mr. Winter may have to say.” 

Winter glanced casually at the Lord 
Mayor, and went calmly on. “It certainly 
wasn’t the money that attracted me,” he ob- 
served. 

“Didn’t you get enough?” cried a voice 
from the renewed hubbub. 

“Yes,” said Winter, “do not misunder- 
stand me. I donot remember precisely what 
sum Mr. Jump offered me; no, to be honest, 
I remember perfectly well. It was twenty- 
five guineas.” 

“You ought to pay it back,” shouted the 
voice, amid cheers from the back, whilst the 
front rows and the Lord Mayor looked un- 
comfortable at this bickering about filthy 
lucre. 


178 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


“It is, I must add,” the lecturer proceeded, 
“a very handsome fee for this sort of thing. 
Often enough quite eminent men are asked 
to come and do this sort of thing for ten or 
fifteen guineas and their railway fares, and 
many of them find that it pays them to do 
it at that. A few years ago I myself would 
have jumped at an offer of even five guineas, 
thought I should have accepted the engage- 
ment with apparent reluctance and difficulty. 
Twenty-five guineas would have seemed a 
tempting sum to me, and I daresay it still 
does to many of you. Some of you no doubt 
could spare the whole amount as easily as 
you have spared the amount of your seats 
this evening; but others probably have to 
count every shilling, and cannot but envy 
people who are paid so many pounds for an 
hour’s apparently easy speechmaking. But 
it isn’t now a large sum to me; I have plenty 
of money, and can make it with very much 
less effort and discomfort than this kind of 
excursion involves. What was it then? 
Was it mere weakness? Inability to say 
‘No’? I have tried to convince myself that 
it was that, but I fear I was trying to let 
myself off on the score of an amiable weak- 
ness. Was it that I enjoy public speaking? 
Sometimes, after I have started, and when 
the audience is responding well, I do; often 
I do not, and in anticipation the thing is 


The Lecture 179 


always a bore and a burden. Was it my 
vanity then? In some obscure way I think 
TOEWP ASE eid c: 

He elaborated the argument with painful 
realism, and the waters of discontent swelled 
again. Again the Lord Mayor, red and furi- 
ous, had to rise to secure him a hearing. 
“We shall all, I think,” he shouted, “‘be re- 
lieved when Mr. Winter finds it convenient 
to bring his surprising remarks to a close, 
and I trust he will be short, but I must again 
beg you not to reduce the proceedings to a - 
confusion which will not reflect credit on 
Mulcaster.”’ 

“T shall not,”’ said Winter, his face still 
perfectly impassive, “detain you much 
longer, but there is one last aspect of the 
matter on which I feel obliged to say a few 
words. I have analysed my own motives 
for coming here, but what were yours? 
Mixed, of course, as you yourselves are 
mixed. Some of you, including probably the 
two gentlemen behind me, are poor and ear- 
nest students who spend all they can on 
books, and felt in coming here that they 
could learn something from me and be up- 
lifted by contact with an inspiring person- 
ality.” 

“Boo!” came a loud roar from the gal- 
lery. 

“Even those, I do not doubt, were gov- 


180 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


erned also, in common with the majority of 
you, by the more trivial motive of curiosity. 
A few of you have read my books, more 
have seen my name in the newspapers, more, 
still, have had my name, habits and charac- 
teristics dinned into their ears during the 
past few weeks in order that this hall might 
be filled. The great majority of you came 
to listen to me on this subject as they would 
have come to listen to me on any other sub- 
ject: they came, that is, at best to pick up a 
few scraps of information, at worst to listen 
idly, looking forward to a chance of laughter 
or cheap emotion, liking to gape at a pictur- 
esque celebrity, of whom, after a week’s close 
contact, they would be thoroughly tired. 
‘Primary Functions of Art,’ indeed! Why, 
half of you barely understand what the words 
mean, and even if I told you would forget 
it by to-morrow.” 

The storm broke now uncontrollably. 
Even in the front rows angry gentlemen got 
up and exclaimed “Intolerable!” Some be- 
gan to shepherd their womenfolk away; 
others remained standing, and saying “Sit 
down, sir,” ‘“Monstrous, sir.” Behind them 
all restraint was rapidly disappearing. Men 
stood shouting and waving their fists. 
Howling groups pressed their way up the 
gangways. The back of the hall, lost now 
to all sense of respectability and local pride, 


The Lecture 181 


was a tumult of songs, cat-calls and yells 
of execration. The lady in the front row 
was in a state of silent ecstasy. Winter’s 
calm fell off him as he made a last desperate 
effort to be heard. His veins stood out, his 
arms waved, the pink tie fluttered in the air, 
and he bellowed with the full force of his 
lungs: “Yes, and the last touch of asininity 
and humbug is given by the customary idiocy 
of putting in the chair a man who, if it 
hadn’t been for this row, would have been 
fast asleep. Look at his face! What on 
earth does this Lord Mayor know about Art? 
What does he care?” 

The Lord Mayor put his hands on the 
table, and half rose, his eyes bulging incred- 
ulously from his red face. “This sack of 
stocks and shares,” roared Winter, in a 
pythagorean frenzy; “This great donkey! 
This walrus! This frog!’ The Lord Mayor 
sprang towards him. The concourse, exas- 
perated beyond measure by this last insult 
to Mulcaster, bawled, hissed, hooted, thun- 
dered. A vast pack of hot faces began press- 
ing against the platform. Some climbed on 
others’ shoulders. Mr. Maxwell acted. He 
seized Winter, flung him across to Jump, and 
escaped as by a miracle into a side street 
and a cab. Simultaneously with its start- 
ing, a great horde, howling like wolves, burst 
out into the street. The cab darted ahead. 


182 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


Mulcaster was saved from the disgrace of a 
lynching. “My hat and bag,” complained 
Winter, now in a state of collapse, as the 
cab rounded the first corner. 

“Get off without them, damn you,” said 
Mr. Maxwell, who had never sworn in his 
life before. ‘Shove him into the train, 
Jump,” he said, “I’m getting out here. I 
can’t stand it any longer. I hope you realise 
you’ve ruined us,” he exclaimed, in a voice 
husky with grief. But he hadn’t ruined 
them. 

Alas for the frailty of human nature and 
the special weaknesses of an advertising age! 
“Any sort of publicity,” as Winter, in his 
decline, had learnt to say, “is better than 
none.” The next day’s headlines, certainly, 
described his conduct as extraordinary. But 
it immensely extended his fame; his precise 
words faded from memory; and thenceforth 
he was in far greater demand, both as an 
author and lecturer, than he had ever been 
before. Within three weeks he himself 
firmly believed that he had deliberately done 
the whole thing as a stunt; he chuckled about 
it as his friends declared that he was even 
cleverer and more daring than they had 
thought. Some time passed before the offi- 
cials of the Mulcaster Literary Society recov- 
ered from their shock; but eventually even 
Mr. Maxwell forgave what he now thought 


The Lecture 183 


to have been a joke, if a poor one; and when 
a plumper Winter, after three years, re- 
turned to the city in a large touring car, it 
was to deliver a lecture (at a very large fee 
in a theatre) on quite orthodox, wise and 
whimsical lines. One sly allusion to his pre- 
vious appearance and disappearance in Mul- 
caster brought the house down. 

Only the Lord Mayor suffered. He, poor 
man, became such a butt that he had to re- 
tire from public life. 


VII: THE CEMETERY 
I 


Te is possible to have a great reputation 
in letters and yet make very little money. 
It is possible to have a fairly respectable 
reputation and make hardly any money at 
all. This is especially so with poets. Lionel 
Crewe was a poet. 

From time to time he had published a 
book in prose. None of these had been 
novels. There was a dialogue on esthetics, 
a small monograph on Michael Angelo, a 
collection of essays on Life and Art, and 
a volume of rather solid reprinted reviews. 
These works had been treated with consider- 
ation by all the reputable critics, and with 
deference by those who will treat anything 
with deference if they are sure at once that 
it is intelligent and that it cannot possibly 
be popular. They said that he had “a dis- 
tinguished mind”’; his sober reflections gave 
them an opportunity to talk about intuition, 
abstract reality, Croce and Bergson; the nor- 
mal reader, perusing these comments in a 
slightly bewildered way, was given the im- 
pression that he was hopelessly beyond the 

184 


The Cemetery 185 


pale. Yet even those who used Crewe’s 
speculations as a smoke-screen always gave 
their reviews some such heading as “The 
Prose of a Poet.” Nobody else appeared 
to read this prose at all, and whenever Crewe 
found that some one had read one of these 
books he sadly assumed that the gentleman 
(for it was never a lady) had been the re- 
cipient of a review copy. Sales were negli- 
gible. The booksellers were slightly bitten 
once, but not again; and no two of these 
works were issued with the same publisher’s 
imprint. 

Even the poems had appeared with a va- 
riety of publishers, and even these were far 
from lucrative. Two of Crewe’s early books 
had gone into a second edition, but no more. 
Extension Lecturers who discussed Modern 
Literature never talked about his books, and 
there was no demand for them in the shops 
just before Christmas. Habitual critics of 
poetry usually mentioned him with respect 
when they remembered him; though they 
always kept review copies of his books, they 
did not often refer to them. His first book 
of lyrics had been received with some warmth 
and then forgotten; when he followed it up 
with a play called “Artaxerxes” everybody 
said it ought to be staged; but when it was 
staged, by a Society, for one performance, 
nobody went to see it. He drove steadily on, 


186 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


now with a book of Elegies, now with a dra- 
matic monologue in blank verse, now with a 
narrative poem concerning Tristram and 
Iseult or Paris and Helen. The corpus of 
his works had become considerable; his 
standing was respectable; his earnings, as we 
have said, were negligible. Men conversing 
about him would say that he was good but 
somehow dull; they admired him when they 
were reading him, but when they were not 
reading him they didn’t want to read him. 
There was a lack of fascination about him; 
he wanted aerating; the acuter diagnosed a 
disease which manifested itself by many 
symptoms. He was at once genuine and 
derivative; his expression was in a manner 
his own, yet constantly reminiscent of the 
great dead, and the more elderly dead, Mil- 
ton, Dante, Goethe and Wordsworth, in par- 
ticular; he lacked always the last touches of 
fire, of accuracy and of music; and he was 
oddly out of touch with his contemporaries. 
His works might have been written thirty 
years earlier; and it must be admitted that 
if his contemporaries showed little interest 
in him he displayed a similar indifference to 
them. Not usually given to irony, Crewe 
would sometimes smile to himself when he 
saw that some new anthologist had once more 
copied the same two familiar selections in- 
stead of referring direct to his books; it did 


The Cemetery 187 


not occur to him that anthologists automat- 
ically assumed that two poems from Crewe 
would be enough and knew that no one 
would complain of the absence of more. For 
Crewe cherished, in his quiet way, a very 
good opinion of his own powers and per- 
formance. | 

Few, probably, suspected how good was 
his opinion of himself. He did not boast 
or, unless invited, even talk about his writ- 
ings. Most of his acquaintances thought 
him modest. He seldom entertained in his 
own flat; his most frequent visitors were a 
few old college friends who swore by him, 
believed him to be a great poet (if unread- 
able by persons so stupid as themselves) and 
far better than all the fashionable scribblers 
whose names filled people’s mouths. Never- 
theless he “floated about” a good deal; he 
never refused an invitation to attend a din- 
ner or sit on a committee; and only the 
acutest, whose acuteness was born of sympa- 
thy, and whose sympathy bred silence also, 
perceived that when, politely and tranquilly, 
he took his place among his fellows, he did 
so as one who felt himself entitled to be 
invited anywhere, and was secretly justified 
by the conviction that his rightful place was 
with his peers at the head of any table. 
They were right. Neglect annoyed him a 
little. He had seldom read his juniors, ex- 


188 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


cept occasionally in magazines, since he was 
twenty-five, and he was now fifty; he was 
not jealous of them, but thought them very 
trivial, and entirely lacking in both manage- 
ment and magnificence; it certainly seemed 
absurd that people should chatter about them 
so much, and he could not conceal from him- 
self that whenever he was able to say about 
one of these, “I’m afraid I don’t know his 
work very well,” it gave him a certain pleas- 
ure. There were those, the simpler and less 
cultivated of the persons he encountered, 
who were impressed by this; there were 
elderly circles where, although he was not 
read, his name was vaguely known, but 
which had not yet heard rumour of his 
juniors, more celebrated in another world. 
Yet it would be giving a false impression 
to suggest that he brooded overmuch. He 
was really devoted to his art and quite con- 
vinced that he was the successor and equal 
of all the great poets, and that more than 
any other living man he would have been 
the chosen companion and comprehending 
friend of Coleridge, Arnold and Shakespeare. 
When he thought of his career as a career 
in a competition he was consoled by the cer- 
tainty that he was in the end bound to win 
it. His own age might have underrated him 
at thirty and at forty; if he lived long 
enough his work would survive the flashy 


The Cemetery 189 


ephemerides; in any event he would be a 
classic after his death. Meanwhile, having 
an income, he could afford to wait; and it 
was something that the wiser heads among 
his own contemporaries had a regard for him. 
He smiled now and then when he got a 
letter from no matter whom, saying: “I may 
be a fogy, but I find your work much more 
satisfying and substantial than all this young 
stuff.” The most devastating of the criti- 
cisms made about him in an opposite sense, 
he naturally never heard; they were confined 
to conversation. 

He was fifty—he had always had a fifty- 
ish air about him—when .the first serious 
turning-point of his life came; for it had not 
seriously deranged him when the only woman 
to whom he had ever proposed had refused 
him. In brief, he lost all his money. An 
oilfield was devastated by an army, a repub- 
lic defaulted, a managing director absconded, 
and Lionel Crewe, after half a life dedicated 
to Art, had to get a job. It was a distaste- 
ful business to look for one; it involved mak- 
ing humble requests to rather coarse literary 
friends upon whom he had liked privately, 
always strictly privately, to look down, men 
who always obtusely failed to. see that they 
ought to treat him with a certain deference. 
With whatever reluctance, he swallowed his 
pride and set about it. There was nothing 


190 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


for it but something connected with litera- 
ture; the spontaneous and quixotic offer of 
an old friend, who had heard of his mis- 
fortune, to teach him the work of an indigo 
importer could not be accepted, and he be- 
gan a progress through every office in Fleet 
Street where he knew anybody. His recep- 
tion was uniformly cordial until his mission 
was known, when smiles and delicate com- 
pliments gave way to head waggings, anxious 
frowns, lip-pursings, and promises to “look 
out for something.” A few novels to review 
was all that his trip brought him, and he 
was wondering whether to advertise for a 
secretaryship, when he happened to meet a 
man, a politico-literary peer in point of fact, 
in the reading-room of the club. Accident 
brought out his circumstances; an introduc- 
tion was offered and gratefully accepted; and 
after lunch next day Crewe went off again 
in good hopes of getting something out of 
the editor of The Morning Sun, as staid, 
solid and influential a daily newspaper as 
any in England. He was shown up into a 
panelled room where a youngish man with 
a bald forehead and pince-nez sat, holding 
the torn-open note in his hand. It was the 
celebrated Mr. J. Willis Wills, a Power in 
the Land. 

As Mr. Wills was not inhuman the inter- 
view was not without its embarrassment for 


The Cemetery — 191 


him. It is not pleasant to have a proud, 
cultivated and accomplished gentleman suing 
one, with whatever air of assumed coolness, 
for a job of almost any sort. Mr. Wills did 
not display his embarrassment and Lionel 
Crewe did not perceive it. Mr. Wills was, 
in fact, of the two far the more percipient. 
It did not, for example, take him long to 
decide, in spite of Crewe’s assertion that he 
was willing to do anything, that he was 
actually qualified to do virtually nothing. 
“Not politics, I suppose?” asked Mr. Wills. 
“No, of course not politics,” replied Crewe. 
Mr. Wills’s thoughts scurried round like 
eager birds looking for an opening in a cage. 
The drama, music, the pictures: these were 
all covered and one couldn’t sack a promis- 
ing subordinate to oblige a friend’s friend. 
Crewe was patently (he could not hoodwink 
himself) not the man for a special reporter; 
he had no office training which would enable 
him to devil for the working staff. How- 
ever, Charity will find out the way. Mr. 
Wills had an idea. He smiled brightly and 
firmly slapped an open palm on his desk: 
“T’ve got it,” he said, “there’s the Ceme- 
tery. There’s a lot to be done there and we 
can keep you busy for a long time.” He 
added, remembering with whom he was deal- 
ing, “If you’d consent to do that, we’d really 
be most exceedingly grateful.” 


192 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


II 


The cemetery, graveyard, mausoleum, cat- 
acomb or vault in a newspaper office is a 
department whose existence might be de- 
duced more widely than it is. Eminent men 
seldom give three days’ clear notice of their 
impending deaths; not only that, but they 
have a habit of dying at the most incon- 
venient hours from the Fleet Street point 
of view. They will drop dead from heart 
disease at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night; 
or their sudden disappearance in mid-Atlan- 
tic will be reported just when all competent 
hands are busy coping with a political crisis. 
Some of them complicate matters still fur- 
ther by giving scarcely any particulars about 
their lives and performances in the handy 
reference books. Nevertheless, choose they 
their moments never so awkwardly, they can- 
not outmanceuvre the vigilant hawks of the 
Press. They may die when they will: the 
next editions will contain full summaries 
of their careers, cool and considered estimates 
of their wisdom and stature. The public, 
sleek tyrant, takes what it gets as a matter 
of course. Cesar clad in purple, certainly 
did not bother as to who fished the murex 
up; if he wanted nightingales’ tongues all 
the year round, he got them; he would have 
been annoyed if they were not there. The 


The Cemetery 193 


gross and unwondering Israelites took manna 
in the wilderness as a matter of course, and 
asked no questions about water from the 
rock: that was Moses’s job, and what on 
earth was he good for if he could not do 
that? The parallel need not be carried far- 
ther; but the miracles of the press need a 
certain amount of preparation. Those obit- 
uaries, of three inches or three columns, 
which so promptly and comprehensively re- 
cite the birth and achievements of the dead, 
are not composed whilst the printer stands 
waiting. ‘Those lists of dates and publica- 
tions, speeches and appointments, those copi- 
ous summaries of the upward struggles of 
Prime Ministers and artists, Lunacy Com- 
missioners and Artillery Colonels, are not 
the spontaneous effusions of omniscience. 
They are written in advance, kept ready in 
galley proof, so that the printer can get to 
work as soon as the fatal news comes in. 
And naturally, since men often survive their 
first fame for many years, they are from 
time to time brought up to date. 

That was the task to which Lionel Crewe 
was consigned. He was, Mr. Wills saw 
suddenly, obviously a safe man, as well as 
an educated man. “You will find them all,” 
he said, “in pigeon-holes arranged alphabeti- 
cally. You need not worry about the polli- 
ticians, bishops and so on; confine yourself 


194 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


to the literary men, the painters (if you 
feel equal to them) and the scholars. Vm 
afraid some of them are very old. Give 
yourself a free hand. Where you feel in- 
clined, write a whole new notice. See to it 
that a man’s obituary is suitably enlarged 
where he has become much more important 
since he was last attended to. Where 
you can introduce something from personal 
knowledge, do.” 

“I think,” said Crewe, “I know the sort 
of thing.” 

“Yes, of course you do. You’ve probably 
read thousands of them. My assistant, Mr. 
Hughes, will introduce you to the compos- 
ing-room, and if you find yourself in any 
difficulty he’ll be able to put you right. You 
might just, as a matter of form, show him 
your first specimen, but I’m sure it will be 
all right.” 

With the rest of that conversation we need 
not detain ourselves. The first example, the 
subject of which was dictated by Hughes, 
was thoroughly satisfactory. Mr. Hughes 
was a cheery journalist with a respect for 
men of letters, and Crewe warmed to his 
kindness. Crewe’s corrections and additions 
to the yellow strip of type that was given 
to him were so extensive that Mr. Hughes 
deemed it necessary to set the whole thing 
over again and get a clean proof for filing. 


The Cemetery 195 


“It saves time later,” he explained; “speeds 
up the setting and gives us the measurement 
in advance. Slight corrections don’t, of 
course, matter. Well, you will be all right 
here now, won’t you? Just get on with it 
as you think fit. Ring if you are out of 
paper or the fire wants making up; and let 
Mr. Donkin have any stuff you want set. 
They'll probably come up for three or four 
small notices in the course of the day; if 
you're still here you might as well just have 
a look at them to see that they’re all right. 
But these devils nearly always insist on dying 
just as we’re going to press.” 
He banged the door and disappeared. 


III 


It was a high room and quiet. The sun 
came in over the neighbouring roofs. Crewe 
sat down, stood up irresolutely, and sat down 
again, turning his chair to face the long wall, 
which, from window to door, and from ceil- 
ing to floor, was covered with wooden 
drawers, bearing lettered labels, varying in 
antiquity. There suddenly came over him a 
feeling of awe as he gazed at that great 
flat honeycomb of the predestinate dead. 
He wondered whether those rosy-cheeked 
men, riding now, or walking the streets, 
haranguing crowds or suavely conversing in 


196 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


offices, would turn pale if they could visual- 
ise this place where they were all already 
in the past tense. The sample which he had 
just revised—the corpse was a vociferous 
elderly critic, probably taking the chair at 
a public dinner that very night—had begun 
with: “It is with very great regret that we 
record the death of’; it was full of chilling 
preterites and pluperfects; and it ended with 
a sentence beginning ““The deceased gentle- 
man was twice married.” Here, embraced 
within a few cubic feet, was the memento 
mori for thousands; a spectacle which, by 
telescoping history, reduced all human effort 
and ambition to nullity. Ten years of striv- 
ing and plotting, desperate travelling and 
talking, might pass; or twenty years; but 
then, with absolute certainty, out would 
come the drawer, the folder, the long slip, 
and what was determined would be done. 
These notices took upon themselves the 
similitude of vague vigilant animals waiting 
unseen in their holes, motionless and sleep- 
less, for the moment to pounce where there 
was never defence. Beyond the individuals, 
he reflected, here was the Age itself, already 
dead and gone, beaten down and dismissed ; 
then he smiled ironically, as he reflected that 
it would indulge in one slight reprisal on 
its successor by perpetuating, in its self-writ- 
ten epitaphs, its own complacencies and its 


The Cemetery 197 


own commonplaces. ‘“‘Ab-Ad,” “‘Ock-Oll’: 
what a magazine! So Crewe’s thoughts 
wandered whilst the dust specks wandered 
in the mild sun-rays; then he pulled him- 
self together, reminded himself that he had 
a living to earn, and resolved to begin 
looking for his confréres under letter “A.” 
He pulled out the first drawer, which was 
high up, got it down, flapped up a num- 
ber of blue cardboard jackets, opened one 
and saw a proof and some cuttings, and 
then was struck by an idea. He felt a little 
sickness in the pit of his stomach and then 
he felt himself blush. He recoiled and stood 
still, his eye fixed on a drawer in the second 
row down. It was labelled ‘“By-Cru” and 
it stood out before his gaze as though it 
alone were in focus and all the rest in a mist. 

“By.” “Bywater” perhaps. “Cru,” Cru- 
den; Cruden’s “Concordance” ; possibly a de- 
scendant in the army. And in between 
them, with great and small, long and short, 
the one which mattered more than all the 
rest put together. There, somewhere, was 
the Sun’s verdict on Lionel Crewe, stowed 
away, forgotten, until the day when it also 
should be needed. A proof of type like the 
rest, cold, fixed, retrospective, checking off 
in brief statements all that his dreams had 
meant to him, the evidence of an artist sand- 
wiched, possibly, between the obituaries of 


198 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


two wholesale grocers. The blood went to 
his head, and his heart beat rapidly. He 
simply must have a look at it. Attempting 
an air of unconcern—for men do not reserve 
all their histrionics for company—he pulled 
out the drawer and carried it to the table. 

For a minute he could not find what he 
was seeking. The thought crossed his mind 
that perhaps the whole truth was that his 
contemporaries did not really suppose him 
worth recording at all; but, come, this was 
too much, this was impossible! He turned 
them over again and came to a thin folder 
which he had missed, outside which was writ- 
ten “Creswell, Crether, Crew, Crewe.” His 
hands trembled as he opened it. He noticed 
that Admiral Crether, of whom he had never 
heard, had two long galleys to himself, and 
he could not resist, already, a novel pang 
of jealousy and a protesting snort. Was he 
here? Yes, here he was. One strip; his 
name at the top; about five inches of type. 
A date at the end was four years past. 

Walking about the room, he read it 
at great speed. As he read, his step quick- 
ened and his mouth tightened. He looked 
through it again, more slowly, and then laid 
it on the table. “It’s scandalous,” he cried, 
“it’s abominable.” 

“It’s so utterly stupid and ignorant,” he 
cried, and paused again. 


The Cemetery 199 


“T can’t expect every one to agree, but it’s 
patently absurd. It’s so damned unjust,” 
he wailed. You could not hope for fine 
criticism in an obituary written by some odd 
hack turned on to the job, but the Suz really 
was expected to maintain a certain standard. 
It had a responsibility towards itself and its 
readers, and its readers had faith in it. The 
other obituaries he had glanced at had, on 
the whole, been sound and fair; the one he 
had brought up to date had been a really 
creditable and balanced criticism of a man 
who had enjoyed more reputation than he 
deserved. ‘Just like my luck,” muttered 
Crewe, who was always frank with himself 
about his luck, though he had never specifi- 
cally complained to others. And he visual- 
ised all respectable England reading this 
coarse and careless rubbish at its breakfast 
tables, and confirmed for life in its habit of 
neglecting and underestimating the works of 
Lionel Crewe, the solidest, most durable poet 
of his time. Then, with the ground failing 
beneath his feet, he had the horrid thought 
that, after all, things need not always come 
right, even in the end. He had always been 
supported by the consoling conviction that 
posterity would rectify the wrongs of the 
present. He might be outshone by a thou- 
sand charlatans now, but his death would be 
a signal for a re-estimate; he would be in 


200 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


the Pantheon as long as civilisation lasted. 
As he looked at the dreadful dismissal of 
the late Mr. Crewe even this hope wavered. 
Surely this, in so authoritative a quarter, 
might damp down all curiosity about him, 
warn off all investigators: then time might 
pass and he might be relegated for ever to the 
limbo where even Herrick, who lived in an 
age of few poets, had once been hidden for 
over. a: century. It was cruel! | Jt was 
beastly! It was not to be borne! ‘Tastes 
might differ, but the grotesque was the gro- 
tesque. These calculated damnings with 
faint praise burnt word for word into his 
mind. He could shut his eyes to see them. 
in bright letters: “Crewe’s thought always 
had a certain kind of distinction and his lan- 
guage a certain kind of dignity. . . . His 
style was distinctly derivative. ... He 
showed little originality in his choice of sub- 
jects. . . . He was out of touch with the 
main movements in contemporary literature ; 
his imagery was on the conventional side, his 
psychology can only be described as distinctly 
on the beaten track, and there was a savour 
of academic eloquence about his writing. 
. . . His verse was not unmusical, but it 
was not conspicuously musical; at moments 
he seemed to glimpse heights which he never 
achieved. . . . It might have been better for 
him if he had never read Milton and Words- 


The Cemetery 201 


worth. . . . There was perhaps a consider- 
able poet buried in him, but something— 
‘maybe a lack of direct contact with life as 
men live it—seemed to prevent its disinter- 
ment. . . . He will be remembered, if he 
is remembered at all, as a gifted man who 
never failed in his regard for the great tradi- 
tions of letters, and a poet who in one or 
two lyrics showed what, in happier circum- 
stances, he might have achieved. .. . Of 
his prose works, which included a good deal 
of the best and most useful kind of literary 
journalism, the most conspicuous is perhaps 
the monograph on Michael Angelo, which 
resumes very succinctly the main facts of 
the great painter’s life, character and influ- 
ence and which well deserves to be re- 
PLintedin vey 

How utterly wretched! ‘This, as a de- 
scription of a life of devoted service to let- 
ters! Crewe paced and paced the room and 
then, with a gesture of despair, took up his 
hat and went out to lunch. As an after- 
thought he carried the offensive proof with 
him; he set it before him at the luncheon 
table and mused. There were additions to 
it in a neat small hand; it struck him, after 
some contemplation, that the hand was one 
which he could imitate. 

The thought was no sooner entertained 
than repelled in horror. ‘“Forger,’’ cried an 


202 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


inner voice, “how could you think of such 
a thing!” Very depressed, he abandoned the 
idea, went back to his work, and carried on. 
Yet, when he left the office, and again next 
morning, the temptation recurred insistently. 
“You can do nobody any harm,” urged an- 
other inner voice, ‘and you will be doing a 
service to the cause of truth.” The pressure 
was never intermitted and at last, after a 
week, he yielded. 

Almost without intending it, he began by 
striking out a few words, an operation the 
performance of which did not need any sim- 
ulation at all. “His thought had always a 
certain kind of distinction and his language 
a certain kind of dignity.”” What was the 
meaning of that grudging qualification? how 
could it be justified? why should the Sun 
make a fool of itself by printing anything 
so stupid? He hesitated; then he drew out 
his fountain pen in order to strike out ‘a 
certain kind of” in two places. Surely, he 
thought, there was nothing wrong in that; 
he was merely doing his duty to this obituary 
as he had been instructed to do it to them 
all. He gazed; he paused; he acted. 


IV 


Each day for several weeks, in the midst 
of a conscientious application to his regular 


The Cemetery 203 


labours, Crewe took down the file which con- 
tained his own little slip, reconsidered it, and 
amended it in the interests of mere truth. 
A “scarcely” went, an “almost” went, a 
“rather” went, and various qualifications 
such as “if he is remembered at all.” For 
a time he confined himself to simple exci- 
sions; but when he had cut out all that he 
was inclined to cut out, the notice, shorter 
even than it was to begin with, was still very 
unsatisfactory. He was, both instinctively 
and deliberately, a man of great intellectual 
integrity. He had no desire to cheat or get 
more than his due; he thought as much (he 
told himself) about the prestige and respon- 
sibility of the Suz as he did about his own 
reputation. It was really a wrong thing that 
what was, in such matters and on such occa- 
sions, the highest national authority, inspir- 
ing much of the metropolitan and virtually 
all the provincial and colonial press, should 
provide an inaccurate and incompetent rec- 
ord. Patently, in his own case as much as 
in others, it was his duty as a man whom the 
Sun trusted as an expert, to improve this 
ridiculous screed and bring it nearer the plain 
facts. Some improvements were quite ob- 
vious and very few days had passed before 
he made them. He hesitated slightly before 
his first employment of the false handwrit- 
ing; but he was soon persuaded that the end 


204 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


justified the means, since the end was the 
mere avoidance, by eschewing his own hand, 
of a very unlikely discussion originating one 
could hardly guess where, but certainly in 
some quarter not properly equipped for a lit- 
erary controversy. ‘“There was a savour of 
academic eloquence about his writing!” 
Hang it all, this showed a plain misappre- 
hension of indisputable facts! Had he not 
always quite deliberately aimed at that lofti- 
ness of expression which he believed to be 
the proper vesture of the Muse? Had he 
not consciously stood as an opponent of the 
modern tendency towards a flat conversa- 
tionalism in movement and vocabulary? 
Had he not always been ready with clear- 
cut grounds even for the employment of a 
certain measure of archaism? ‘This obituary 
had obviously been written by some unthink- 
ing parrot of aman who had merely repeated 
what he had heard from parties on whom 
Crewe had always frowned and who were, 
as he thought, responsible for the degenera- 
tion and disintegration of English literature. 
He would leave the truth, he decided, but 
place it in its proper aspect. He deleted 
that sentence about academic eloquence and 
substituted: “he maintained, both in his the- 
ory and in his practice, that most modern 
writers have made a fatal mistake in throw- 
ing overboard half the resonance of the great 


The Cemetery 205 


tongue which they have inherited, and in his 
longer works, he deliberately, and almost 
alone in his generation, endeavoured, as the 
greatest of our poets endeavoured. before 
him, to clothe high thoughts in high lan- 
guage. He did not, in fact, disdain organ 
music.” The same fact was stated; no new 
judgment was expressed; the thing was 
merely put accurately. Similar modifica- 
tions he introduced into the reference to his 
choice of subjects. Why this assumption 
that the greatest subjects in the world had 
been exhausted? Had not Milton thought 
of reviving the Arthurian legends, had not 
the nineteenth century revived them? Why 
should Swinburne write the hundredth Tris- 
tram poem and he not the hundred-and-first ? 
Why this idiotic assumption that the immor- 
tal myth of Helen of Troy could not be re- 
fertilised by the thought and feeling of each 
successive generation ? 

Each day for several weeks he altered here 
a little and there a little, in minute writing 
on the ample margins. He brought almost 
every sentence of this critical summary into 
a closer relation with indisputable truth; 
then it occurred to him that not a single 
point that had been made had been illus- 
trated by quotation. It was clear that, from 
any point of view, obituary criticism, like 
any other criticism, must be more informa- 


206 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


tive, interesting and convincing, if the points 
were adequately illustrated. Crewe knew 
his own poems by heart, and he was at no 
loss for admirable quotations—how well 
they looked out of their contexts, he could 
not help thinking—to display all the princi- 
pal characteristics of his art. He quoted a 
peroration on which he had always prided 
himself; a description of one of his classical 
heroines; a passage which showed (for this, 
surely, had to be demonstrated too) that, 
when there was fitting occasion, he could 
be colloquially simple with the best of them; 
and a whole short lyric which exhibited an 
especially neglected branch of his activity. 
This done (not, it must be realised, without 
long delays, fresh considerations, new and 
carefully weighed out decisions) he added 
two representative quotations from his philo- 
sophic pieces, necessary to show his creative 
work in its right relief. Now and again he 
would add also some fact which had been 
omitted; there were particulars as to his 
friendships; there were a few maxims on 
which he had always prided himself and 
which he believed to be salutary. All this, 
he was persuaded, was not so much dictated 
by egotistic motives as by the assurance that 
the cause in which he believed stood in need 
of propaganda. Was it not resonable that, 


The Cemetery 207 


finally, he should round off the incomplete 
statement by references to what were evi- 
dently the tenets of one or two of his poetic 
contemporaries, who had a different theory 
of expression ; references that were, of course, 
not hostile, but merely by way of definition. 

Three months had passed since he had be- 
gun work in the Cemetery. He had earned 
his keep, he flattered himself; all the literary 
biographies in those rows of berths were now 
polished and up to date; and his own was 
now as good as the others. It was not, of 
course, either as full or as laudatory as it 
would have been had another person, famil- 
iar with his works, written it. But at least 
bare justice had been done, and, though it 
was difficult to calculate the precise gross 
length of the scores of additions which now 
covered the blank yellow stretch of un- 
printed galley, the five inches had probably 
been expanded into a full column, a column 
worthy of three rows of headlines. He read 
it through for the last time one summer day, 
just before lunch, and replaced it in its nook 
determined not again to disturb it. Full of 
the subject he left his room and the build- 
ing, and walked down to Blackfriars Bridge, 
where he automatically leant upon the para- 
pet of the Embankment and looked at the 
swirling waters of high tide. He felt 


208 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


strangely detached from life; void of all im- 
pulse towards further original creation ; look- 
ing forward to nothing. 

Suddenly a strange idea took possession of 
him. He had prepared for his death: why 
not die? Thirty years of jealousies and re- 
sentments came to a head in him. ‘These 
people had ignored and deprecated him all 
these years, chasing after every sort of will- 
o’-the-wisp whilst they were blind to the ra- 
diance of his own steady lamp. Why not 
teach them a lesson? Why not show them 
that they had fatuously ignored a Master 
living amongst them? Once that Sun obit- 
uary had appeared none of them would ever 
dare to be half-hearted again about him; they 
would know and they would have to re- 
orientate themselves. 

There was the water. He could not swim, 
and he had the will to sink. It was only 
one movement over the stones and he would 
fall and drown. He could, if he liked, leave 
a message on the bank; but that was hardly 
necessary. Just that little action, and to- 
morrow’s Szn would promulgate the fact of 
his eminence, the names of all his books, 
the signal grandeur of his finest passages, 
to every educated household in the country. 
Yes; this was the natural sequel to his prep- 
arations, the final polish of his justifiable 
revenge. He placed a hand upon the para- 


The Cemetery 209 


pet and prepared to scramble over to his 
death. 

At this moment he heard voices, quite close 
to him. A young man and a young woman 
had come into the same bay, and were talk- 
ing to each other affectionately but in- 
telligently. “Look at the sun on the red 
sails of those barges,” the girl suddenly 
said; “isn’t it lovely!” Crewe involuntarily 
looked at the sunlight, which he had not 
noticed all day, fostering the rich red-brown 
of the sails; and a pang shot through his 
heart. Other similar passages followed, 
making a similar impression on him, and 
then, strikingly if unoriginally, to the evi- 
dent admiration of her companion, the girl 
broke out with, “Well, we may be hard up, 
but it’s good to be alive!” 

The phrase was not new to Lionel Crewe. 
But somehow he had never properly taken 
it in before. He was on the verge of suicide 
and it assumed a new force. Good to be 
alive; yes, it was good to be alive! There 
was the sun, there were the barges; there 
were the stone walls and the water poppling 
past them, there were the people and the 
trams, the farther shore and the sky. They 
all shone with beauty and mystery, and as, 
with palpitating heart, he drank the spec- 
tacle in, his thought began ranging the whole 
universe of his experience. Life; how multi- 


210 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


tudinous and how rich it was! His own 
hand, lying on the stone, was a wonder. 
Everything he had ever seen was a wonder. 
There were all the continents and cities, 
rivers and forests; all the busy millions of 
men in their fields and factories; all the seas 
and their ships, all the deserts and their 
secrets. There was day with its radiance 
and night with its softness and stars; there 
were the seasons: spring, with its burst of 
green buds from the black trees, summer 
and its succession of the insects and flowers, 
autumn and its harvest moon and _leaf- 
strewn pools, winter and its miraculous 
frosts. Beyond all these symbols, to be con- 
templated in Life alone, was the mystery 
of eternity, of the roots from which sprang 
every planet and every blossom and every 
human soul. 

Lionel Crewe was excited as he had never 
been excited before. He reached out to 
grasp all things, and to mould them all to 
his song. A new neighbour broke his thought 
and he returned to earth to remember his 
preposterous resolve. He had been going 
to his death; and why? Simply for fame, 
a fame which he would not see, and a fame 
which must at best be fleeting in comparison 
with the life of the earth, itself a thing of 
no duration. In a hundred years all his 
critics, rivals and friends would be dead; 


The Cemetery 211 


some, by a minority, would still be remem- 
bered. In three hundred years that com- 
pany, with or without his own name, would 
be much sparser. In a thousand years? 
Well, but in ten thousand? The very fame 
of Homer, he saw, would dwindle and die in 
a geological age; what did it matter, whether 
long or short? He was bothering, he now 
knew, over something that did not matter, 
employing complicated stratagems to entrap 
something that would vanish when it was 
caught. “God,” he muttered to himself, 
“what a fool I have been!” With a new 
wisdom in his eyes and a half smile on his 
lips he turned from the wall and walked 
northward. 

He went into a public house, had a glass 
of beer and a sandwich, and hurried back 
to the Sun office. The nearer he approached 
it the faster he went; and, once inside the 
building, he began leaping up the stairs three 
at a time. Turning the first corner he 
bumped violently into somebody, nearly 
knocking him over. It was Mr. Hughes, as 
cheerful as ever. 

“Hallo,” said Mr. Hughes, “forgotten 
something ?” 

“No,” cried Crewe, racing past him with 
an apology, “remembered something.” 

Up four flights he went, along the corri- 
dor, round the corner, and into his familiar - 


212 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


headquarters. The very room seemed to 
greet him with a new friendliness, as though 
knowing that he had thrown off the burdens 
both of life and of his subterfuge. He 
slapped down his hat, flung off his coat, 
pulled down the familiar dossier, plucked 
out the much-tinkered obituary, and set to 
work with a gusto such as he had never be- 
fore known. His first action was to shear 
off the whole bottom of the proof with the 
scissors; this removed at one stroke nine- 
tenths of his elaborate additions. Next he 
blocked out every other addition he had 
made; and finally he set himself to reduce 
the notice to the shortest reasonable dimen- 
sions. Having done this he was still not 
satisfied. This, after all, was only a game. 
He was full of poetry now; it sang in 
his head, superb stuff with unprecedented 
thythms; he felt the necessity of saying, for 
the sheer sake of saying, what he thought 
of his previous aims and. achievements. 
“Rather an academic artificer than a poet,” 
he wrote in, still employing the calligraphy 
of his old deceit. “Mr. Crewe’s work was 
all bred out of books,”? he wrote; and ‘“‘con- 
coction not inspiration is the word that oc- 
curs to one.’ A few adjectives such as 
“pompous,” “dull” and “‘wooden”’ were dis- 
creetly sprinkled about, and he looked at the 
completed work with a smile of satisfaction. 


The Cemetery LAG 


The first Lionel Crewe had now been de- 
scribed as he deserved. 

He had finished for the day. He strode 
out. He was going to begin a new career 
forthwith; the hidden springs of his nature 
had been unsealed and he was not going to 
care a dump what any one, living or un- 
born, would say about him. He returned 
to his lodgings to enjoy the prospect: un- 
happily we shall never know what he would 
have made of it, for he died that evening 
of heart failure. 

The news reached the Szn offices late, 
through a Press Agency. The person in 
charge was an underling; he sent a menial 
upstairs for Lionel Crewe’s obituary, glanced 
at it, and sent it down to the printer. Next 
morning it appeared, and the small world 
that bothered about such things was pro- 
foundly shocked. Crewe had some genuine 
admirers, not of the first order of percipi- 
ence; there were many other people who 
respected him without admiring him; there 
was a third class of people who had never 
read a line he had written but were quite 
prepared to join in any campaign on behalf 
of the maltreated Muses against the pachy- 
dermatous Philistines. The first section 
started the row; the other two sections will- 
ingly enough joined in. A great writer, they 
said, had been treated unpardonably by a 


214 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


great newspaper; the only possible reply was 
a mass meeting of sympathisers. The meet- 
ing was held; a Crewe Society was formed; 
various members engaged themselves to write 
at length, in all the best quarters, on the 
signal merits of Crewe’s work; and, in five 
minutes, it was arranged that a memorial 
edition should be published, and that the 
Dean of Westminster would be asked to ad- 
mit a tablet into the Poets’ Corner in the 
Abbey. This request, owing to lack of space 
and the blind faith that the Dean could not 
help reposing on the edicts of the Sun, was 
refused ; the subscriptions were diverted to a 
statue in a Bayswater Square. The din made 
was so great that the general public bought 
Crewe’s works in large numbers, and he was 
established, for at least a century, as part 
of the canon of English literature. 


VIII: THE PAINFUL DILEMMA 
I 


| Pe obeying of conscience, even for a 
man with the best of intentions and no 
thought for self, is not always an easy mat- 
ter. Conscience is often a Cerberus, a 
double-headed hound with two fierce throats 
yelping “‘dictates,”’ and two ravening maws 
gaping in rivalry for the single and indivisi- 
ble bone of “placation.” A man can only 
do his best. He must often make his choice 
on the spur of the moment, and yet he must 
risk reproach for not choosing otherwise. 
These embarrassments, common to the life 
of all men who control their actions and 
censor their motives, come in certain peculiar 
forms to the arbiters of the arts. Ought an 
editor to print a barely tolerable article be- 
cause he knows its author to be a struggling 
hero who supports a wife, a mother, a 
mother-in-law and five children? Ought he 
to accept weak verses from a rich man be- 
cause he hopes to persuade the rich man to 
spend a large amount of money on scholar- 
ships or the succour of poor artists? Ought 
a critic to overpraise a writer because he has 
been underpraised By others or because a 
2 


216 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


little favourable notice may enable him, a 
deserving human, to earn his next year’s 
meals? How far should the morals of an 
able work influence the critic’s decision to 
notice or not to notice it, since all notice 
must attract attention to it? How far isa 
critic entitled, out of a consideration for a 
friend’s feelings, to suppress his conviction 
that that friend’s vogue as an artist is ut- 
terly unjustified and that the public’s eyes 
should be opened to the fact that they have 
been worshipping a sham whilst ignoring 
better men? Such questions, in the form 
of dilemmas, present themselves daily. It is 
all very well for you, bold Reader, to an- 
swer them all with a loud “No,” “Yes,” or 
“Not at all.” But they are never quite so 
simple as they appear here. 


II 


It was a winter’s evening. "Two men were 
in a Chelsea library-drawing-room after an 
early supper. Ronald Cameron, young, fair, 
tall, good-looking, was standing in evening 
dress. His host, John Fulford, darker and 
older, sat by a table covered with books. 
These men were two of the most reputable 
and influential critics in London, Fulford 
of books, Cameron of the drama; they were 
waiting for Fulford’s wife. 


The Painful Dilemma DAW 


“It’s a filthy night outside,’ said Cam- 
eron, “I don’t like leaving this fire. I hope 
Dolly will think the theatre worth it.” 

“Oh, she’s sure to enjoy it. Id rather 
you than I though, to-night,” replied Ful- 
ford. 

“What shall you do?’ 

“T shall probably work. I’ve a lot of re- 
views to do. There’s this wretched novel of 
poor old Hoffman’s. I wish to the Lord I 
could say something good of it. I saw him 
last week. He’s such a harmless creature 
and he looked at me with the pleading eyes 
of a dog. He simply lives for his Art and 
he’s no use at it. I shall have another look 
at it, but it’s just as mediocre as the rest. 
I shan’t be able to mention it at all.” 

Cameron lit a cigarette and laughed. “It’s 
a pity,” he said, “that so many nice men 
write bad books.” 

“Yes,” said Fulford, rising as his wife en- 
tered, ‘and that so many swine write good 
ones. Well, good-bye both of you; I hope 
you will enjoy yourselves. You'll find me 
here when you come back.” 

“T trust so,” said Dolly, laughing; and off 
they went. 

Fulford got himself a drink, settled in his 
chair, and began work. That is to say he 
took up the top book from the pile by the 
reading lamp, lit a cigarette, laid the book 


218 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


on his knees, and gazed into the fire. He 
had, they said, an interesting face: it was 
aquiline and worn by forty-five years of in- 
tense living. His long legs stretched out to 
the fender; now and then he sipped at his 
glass or felt in the box for another cigarette; 
now and then he gently swept back a lock 
of thick dark hair from his forehead. At 
moments he frowned, at moments bit his 
under lip or gently cursed. For he was 
thinking of Alexander Hoffman, pitying 
him, longing to do something for him, at 
a loss to discover how. He had known this 
man for ten years; ever since the aspirant 
after immortal laurels had thrown up his 
clerkship, at twenty-three, and entered into 
that literary fray for which he was so singu- 
larly unfitted. He had first come to Fulford 
at the Sentinel office with an unnecessary 
introduction given with facile benevolence 
by another literary editor who had merely 
wished to fob him off—for thus do some 
novices tramp the full circle of the editorial 
rooms, hope diminishing with each new kind 
offer. Hoffman’s face was already prema- 
turely aged, his eyes bright in their deep 
hollows, lines running from the base of his 
large nose to the sides of his sensitive mouth, 
his curly hair even then preparing to retreat 
at the temples. In ten years, Fulford real- 
ised with a pang, ten years of frustration 


The Painful Dilemma 219 


and underfeeding, that quite young man had 
grown grey. He remembered that first con- 
versation, the anxious persistence of that 
even gentle voice with its marked cockney 
accent. Hoffman was not so much (though 
he had to live) asking for work as for rec- 
ognition of the genius in his unpublished 
manuscripts; it had gradually dawned on 
Fulford that he united in unique combina- 
tion excessive personal shyness and humility 
with impenetrable confidence in his powers 
as an artist. Fulford led him on to talk, 
smiled assent convincingly, was more and 
more taken and touched as the little man 
poured out his history and his ambitions. 
Hoffman talked at large about the changing 
scope of the novel, the possibilities of psy- 
chology, his own determination to explore 
new territories of technique. His eyes shone, 
his smile grew intensely eager, whenever his 
suggestions seemed to find a response. And 
(Fulford remembered) it was evident, for 
all his knowledge, enthusiasm, independence, 
fierce determination to hold the world at 
attention, that he lacked everything which 
might make him what he wished to be. His 
ideas were half-baked and odd, whilst his 
expression was commonplace in detail and 
contorted at large; he had no sense of hu- 
mour and obviously no power of instinctively 
understanding other human beings. He was 


220 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


not perceptive, not subtle; he had no agility 
of mind, only a great obstinacy of convic- 
tion; he could talk but was too absorbed in 
his own notions to listen; he had no feeling 
for the shades of words; there was a fire 
within him, but it was not the divine fire. 
Yet Fulford had been attracted. He had 
liked him, been drawn to him, wanted to 
help him, genuinely hoped that he should 
succeed somehow, that he should find things 
more comfortable, and taste some kind, any 
kind, of success. ‘Then the little man sud- 
denly remembered he was in the presence 
of what, compared with himself, was a 
potentate whose careless hands could scatter 
blessings and curses, had checked himself, 
shyly apologised for wasting his elder’s time, 
and wistfully, stammeringly asked the vital 
question. “‘Couldn’t you,” he said, “assist 
me with a little reviewing, Mr. Fulford? 
It would help me to keep going while I am 
finishing my book.” 

Fulford could not remember now what 
book he had, with a knowledge that he was 
to this extent betraying his paper, doled out 
to the eager hands. The result, at all events, 
came down to expectations. A few later 
experiments—unless an experiment must 
contain an element of uncertainty—were 
made, though Hoffman could not help seeing 
in time that behind Fulford’s “You see our 


The Painful Dilemma 221 


reviewing staff is already too full’ there was 
a very half-hearted appreciation of the merits 
of his work. Fulford could recall still the 
general nature of those incompetent reviews, 
shapeless mixtures of dullness and cranki- 
ness, with a queer ineffective force in 
them and always some King Charles’ head, 
Dostoevsky or Freud, dragged in, even were 
the book a record of travel or a polite social 
comedy. Every time, though no one else 
knew it, Fulford had received a letter of 
complaint from some hot-blooded reader en- 
raged at the reviewer’s “silliness,” “‘juvenile 
cocksureness,” and “bad English.” They 
were far from the truth in the pictures they 
had formed of the Unknown Objectionable; 
but Fulford knew well, though he returned 
evasive answers, that in essence they were 
right. In the end he had to push Hoffman 
off, giving him every possible token of good 
feeling except the work for which he yearned. 
It was to Hoffman’s credit that he never 
conceived the slightest grudge; he was sad 
that Fulford’s intelligence was so limited, 
but he continued to show that he liked him, 
as far as one so remote from ordinary man- 
kind could like anybody. They were friends. 

Their encounters had not been frequent: 
accidental meals together after meetings in 
the Strand, fleeting conversations in corners 
at literary parties; once a talk at Fulford’s 


222 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


club where Hoffman, an odd apparition in 
those respectable surroundings, had been 
brought in to lunch by a casual patron. Ful- 
ford could disentangle no impressions of 
these occasions: merely a general memory of 
Hoffman’s anxious face and unpractical as- 
pirations and of his own benevolent feelings 
and suppressions. But one picture did stand 
out vividly clear after four or five years. 
Hoffman, after a prolonged absence, had 
been announced at the office one afternoon. 
He had come in very apologetically with 
the news that he was to be married next day 
at the Tottenham Court Road Registry 
Office. Fulford thrust back a rash impulse 
to offer to be present. This was not asked; 
but they were to have a party in the evening 
in their rooms (“his room” thought Ful- 
ford) in Bloomsbury. “I thought you might 
come in for a little while,” said Hoffman. 
“Emily hopes so too. She knows how good 
you have been to me. We should be very 
grateful.” 

“Why, of course,” exclaimed Fulford, 
“T’m delighted at your news and shall be 
equally delighted to come to your house- 
warming.” That evening, in a fit of im- 
prudent generosity considering the state of 
his own bank balance, he had gone the whole 
hog: it was not a clock, or spoons, or a book, 
but a really beautiful, useful and expensive 


The Painful Dilemma — 223 


writing desk that he despatched to the ad- 
dress in Bloomsbury. And next night, mak- 
ing excuses for his wife, he turned up at the 
crush. He was late, and the din, as he 
climbed the stairs, at its height. The large 
room, with its far end curtained off, was lit 
by candles and full of people: sour intel- 
lectuals, Buffalo Bills, toreadors and apaches 
from the less opulent studios of Chelsea, 
some forlorn-looking damsels and young men 
whom he guessed to be Mrs. Hoftman’s 
friends, and one or two stray elders lke 
himself, present, no doubt, on the same 
terms. Hoffman appeared and scrambled 
away to bring back his wife, a small brown 
person with a shy frank smile for the dis- 
penser of bounty. Beer was flowing; but 
there was whisky in a discreet corner for 
Fulford, and overwhelming thanks for the 
desk, which more than compensated for the 
supercilious glances and sullen glowerings 
of the intelligentsia whose works he had 
probably refused to praise. After a few 
minutes with Mrs. Hoffman he liked her 
very much; she was mothering Alexander 
already; perhaps she was an elementary 
school teacher and Alexander had met her 
in a tea-shop. The whole scene came back 
to him now, the Hoffmans’ brief moment of 
grandeur; and he sighed as he thought of 
the bitter struggle they must have had since, 


224 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


the pinching of that poor gallant little 
woman, the efforts to keep up a brave face, 
the disgruntled associates, the hopes for each 
successive book, always dashed to the ground, 
vast incoherent books which aimed so high 
and fell so flat, books which no honest friend 
of their author could possibly review and 
which had never had a word of praise except 
in obscure log-rolling coteries. There was 
all the recognition Hoffman had obtained. 
Now and then, silently hoping against hope 
to convert him, he had sent Fulford some 
ambitious tale or manifesto printed in one 
of those may-fly journals, those organs of 
the Ishmaelites, of which three or four are 
always struggling for existence in London. 
Polite ambiguities had been returned in ac- 
knowledgment, together with personal in- 
quiries all too obviously warmer. Poor 
devil! Here was another book which had 
been palmed off on an unwary publisher: 
proclaimed on the jacket.as a masterpiece 
comparable with the works of Balzac, Tol- 
stoi and other eminent foreigners. ‘““Well,” 
muttered Fulford to himself as he stared at 
the bright coals, “I only wish I could do 
something for the poor chap.” ‘There was a 
knock at the door. 


The Painful Dilemma 225 


III 


There stood Mrs. Hoffman, shabby and 
pale, her shoulders moist with melting snow. 
Desperate determination was in her tired 
eyes as she tripped over to him, hardly no- 
ticing his outstretched hand. “Oh, Mr. Ful- 
ford,” she said, as he almost forced her into 
a chair, “I hardly dare ask you. I know 
how busy you are. But Alec’ (how odd the 
name sounded) ‘“‘is asking for you, and he’s 
so ill, I can’t tell you how ill he is.” | 

“But of course I will! What is the mat- | 
ter with him?” 

“Didn’t you know?” she asked with a 
touch of pain that gave Fulford a twinge 
of remorse, “he’s been ailing for months and 
[ve had him in bed for weeks. He seems 
to be wasting away. He’s too weak to talk 
long now. All he can think of now is his 
new book, “The Overworld.’ It’s coming out 
on Wednesday and he’s in a fever about it. 
He’s had so much hard luck, so many dis- 
appointments, poor boy. He kept on speak- 
ing of you, and I simply had to come.” 

She noticed the book. ‘‘Yes, I have it 
here,” said Fulford hastily. “Shall we go 
along at once?” 

“Yes, it would be so good of you; I got 
the girl from below to sit with him while 
I ran out.” 


226 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


In the hall Fulford left a note for his wife. 
He put on his heavy coat and opened the 
door. It was blowing hard in the darkness 
and a fierce sleet was falling. Mrs. Hoffman 
was apologetic for it. “It isn’t far to walk 
to South Kensington,” she said, “and we 
can get a train from there.” On such a 
night! Fulford felt ashamed when he 
thought of all the unnecessary cabs he had 
taken in his life, and of this woman to whom 
a cab was a thing that simply did not occur. 
He shouted for one from the rank at the 
corner. As it raced through the dim wet 
streets he answered her hurried confidences 
mechanically; the whole struggle of this poor 
pair formed itself into a series of pictures 
that made his heart ache; he worried as to 
what he could do; he seemed suddenly to 
be surrounded by tragedies complacently ig- 
nored, human duties callously left undone, 
and here she was thanking him for his “‘kind- 
ness.’ Men and women, he reflected bit- 
terly, must be content for small mercies if a 
few civil words were kindness to people bat- 
tling in solitude with poverty and failure. 
They turned out of Holborn into one of the 
degenerate Georgian streets of the quarter. 
They climbed the gas-lit stair, with its old 
panelling, long since painted green. Ful- 
ford remembered stories of vermin behind 


The Painful Dilemma 227, 


old wood. They reached the landing and 
softly entered. 

The curtains at the far end were gone. A 
girl sat by the bed, the crochet in her lap 
bright in the rays of a shaded lamp on a 
small table. The bed was in shadow and 
the girl put her finger to her lip. Of the 
invalid only a little grey hair could be seen 
between sheet and pillow. Fulford had 
never been there since the wedding party. 
It seemed vast and very bare; of course there 
had been a crowd there then: but his desk 
had gone as well, and he knew, with a pang, 
where and why it had gone. A few chairs, 
a few poor prints on the wall, a small shelf 
of books: it was all they had, and they had 
never had much more. A moment showed 
all this: then, on the silence came a faint 
voice from the bed, “Is that Emily?’ She 
tip-toed towards him: “Yes, Alec.” 

“Will Mr. Fulford come?” 

“He is here now.” At the word the bed 
clothes stirred, a straining bony elbow ap- 
peared, the alarmed women hurried to ar- 
range the pillows and Hoffman was propped 
up, with a hand extended over the bed 
clothes. “Come and sit down, Mr. Ful- 
ford,” he whispered. The girl from below 
quietly disappeared from the room, Fulford 
took the chair and the sick man’s hand, and 


228 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


Mrs. Hoffman, saying “Tl leave you for 
ten minutes,”’ followed her friend. 

Fulford was at once shocked and fascinated 
by the change in Hoffman. His hair had 
gone thin and quite grey; his face had a 
horrible agelessness; his ashen stubbled skin 
was tightly drawn over the bones; his dark 
eyes, larger than ever in their deep hollows; 
had a look of fever. But he was not de- 
lirious; he talked, hoarsely and feebly, with 
more than his old intentness, and, after get- 
ting through his thanks as it were in pre- 
determined order, he said, in a voice trem- 
bling with decision: “Mr. Fulford, I want 
to ask you a great favour. My book comes 
out the day after to-morrow. I know it’s 
the biggest thing I’ve done. Will you read 
it? And if you like it say so?” 

“Why, of course, my dear fellow,” said 
Fulford, blushing; “as a matter of fact I 
was just beginning it when your wife came.” 

Hoffman ignored this and proceeded: “I 
know it’s a great deal to ask you. You're 
busy. You’ve always been kind about the 
others. I knew you couldn’t have read them. 
I quite understood you hadn’t time.” 

Fulford was silent; he had read quite 
enough of them. “I promise not to ask you 
again,’ said Hoffman with an appealing 
look; and was seized by a fit of spasmodic 
coughing. Fulford’s eyes suffused with tears. 


b] 


The Painful Dilemma 229 


This was a dying man’s request. No word 
of that had been said: but it was evident 
that Hoffman, his doctor, Emily herself, 
must know that he was dying, evident also 
that Mrs. Hoffman knew well enough what 
he wanted Fulford for. The extent of the 
emergency must remain unspoken. “When 
a man is dying it is etiquette to leave the 
first mention of death to the dying man.” 
The sentence framed itself in Fulford’s 
waiting brain; then he felt bitterly ashamed 
of the form of it, humiliated at its callous 
detachment. The coughing stopped; Hoff- 
man was still again in the warm shadows, 
lying back with his eyes closed. Then he 
opened them and went on. “My cough,” 
he said. ‘Will you promise me to look ‘at 
my book soon? If you like it will you say 
so? My whole vision of the world is in it. 
I have had many disappointments. I value 
your opinion. It would make me so happy 
if you could see all I mean. My hero goes 
through every modern philosophy. It all 
illustrates mine. It is a drama like Faust 
really, only in prose.” 

It was another drama that Fulford saw: 
the lamp-lit room, the dying man in bed, the 
dream, the utter devotion to art and thought, 
which made himself feel like some smug 
grocer or butcher, the courage and anguish 
of a soul. He struggled for expression and 


230 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


found it, fixing his eyes in false candour on 
the searching pathetic eyes before him. 
“Tm sorry you didn’t know it,”’ he said, “I’ve 
always admired your books. It’s only an 
accident that I haven’t reviewed them. Il 
seldom do novels, you know.” In point of 
fact he had suppressed all his staff’s carping 
notices of Hoffman, except one that had 
slipped in by accident. The deception, how- 
ever, was wasted on Hoffman. Hoffman 
had no time for debates, excuses or explana- 
tions; he was thinking only of the immediate 
crisis, concentrated on wrenching from the 
world that recognition of his genius and pro- 
phetic powers for which he had lived. 

“I’m grateful you say so,” he said. “If 
so I know you'll think this the greatest thing 
Ihave done. There is a message in it. The 
plan is grand. There’s nothing like it. Em- 
ily will tell you so.” 

“T1l review it myself,” said Fulford, tak- 
ing the plunge, “‘on the day of publication.” 
He was rewarded by the most beautiful 
pts he had ever seen illuminating a human 

ace. 

Mrs. Hoffman returned; she offered him 
a cup of cocoa, and accompanied him down 
the stairs. In the hall she wrung his hand. 
“Oh, how can I thank you,” she said; “I 
know you are going to do what he wants.” 
Fulford could have hugged her. 


The Painful Dilemma PS | 


IV 


He was again in the wet freezing night, 
looking for the lights of a cab-rank, but 
scarcely noticing the progress of his steps and 
unaware of the sleet. ‘I’ve done it,” he 
kept on saying to himself, “and I’m glad 
Ive done it.” A warm exaltation mingled 
with the pain left by the contemplation of 
a spectacle so wretched and so splendid. 
The problem had crudely presented itself 
and the solution was obvious and inevitable; 
it was really no dilemma at all; seen at close 
quarters it had only one horn. On the one 
side there were two human beings, innocent 
and gentle, one of whom, defeated and de- 
- prived all through his life, was within a few 
days of death, the hand of which already 
overshadowed him. Fulford’s whole being 
swelled with love and pity as he thought, 
afoot and in the taxi, of those two harmless 
lives, of Emily’s selfless devotion and moth- 
ering, of the pure aspirations of her husband, 
of the little pleasures they would no longer 
share, of the sufferings silently borne, the 
inadequate food, the struggle after external 
decency, the dread of doctor’s bills, the shy 
visits to the pawnshop, the courage. He had 
it in his power to make the man, and the 
wife through him, happy, ecstatically happy 
for a day, before he was beyond reach of 


232 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


help or hearing, banished, before his time, 
into the unknown dark. . And what was the 
alternative? To hurt the helpless, to beat 
down the appealing hands, to turn his back, 
to inflict the last savage anguish on two 
hearts which had never harboured anything 
but charity, to stare at a dying man with 
frozen eyes, to know for years that a widow 
would live with the unforgettable memory 
of a final cruelty. And all why? Simply 
to satisfy some self-instituted “intellectual 
conscience,” to support some myth called an 
artistic standard, to minister to his own de- 
sire to exercise a fine judgment, to save a 
few people from buying a book they would 
not enjoy—and to preserve his own reputa- 
tion as a critic as flawless as possible! What 
could all these trifles weigh against those 
other things; in six months Hoffman would 
be dead and gone, and book and review would 
alike be forgotten. Common kindness was 
more important than this chatter of culture; 
but here was the opportunity for more than 
that, the imperative call to a holy duty of 
comfort in the last emergency of life. 

He walked up his steps and turned the 
key. His note was still there: Dolly and 
Cameron had not yet returned ; an age seemed 
to have passed but it was not yet half-past 
ten. Upstairs again and pacing the cosy 
study, he remembered that he had impul- 


The Painful Dilemma 230 


sively told the novelist that he would not 
only himself write at length about the new 
masterpiece but would do his best to per- 
suade other influential critics to “read the 
book,” the tacit assumption being that to 
read was to be conquered. “Might as well 
be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” he re- 
marked with only a rough approximation to 
what he meant. “ll ring up Bowley and 
Dick Jones in the morning and lunch on it. 
We'll give the poor devil a really fine show 
and he can die happy.” 

He heard steps and returned to his chair. 
The theatre-going pair broke in, laughing. 
How had he got on? No, he hadn’t done 
much. There, he might as well have come 
with them. What was the play like? The 
common coin was flung about while Cameron 
took a last drink: somehow he didn’t feel like 
confiding in Cameron, intimate though he 
was. When Cameron had gone he made 
Dolly draw up to the fire and told her the 
whole story; she not only agreed with him 
but abashed him by admiring him, a process 
that always made him feel unworthy. 

Next day he carried out the programme. 
It could not be denied that Bowley, who was 
getting on in years, had seen many people 
in trouble, and was inclined to think artis- 
tic perfection the only thing that gave value 
to life, was a little difficult to move; but 


234 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


he made the great concession in the end un- 
der pressure of Fulford’s graphic pictures 
of the Hoffmans’ life and home. Dick Jones 
was easier; he was a good judge of literature 
but did not take it seriously; he had an al- 
most cynical view about the importance and 
durability of newspaper criticisms, and he 
cared little about what the world of critical 
conversation said about him. Neither of 
them had read the book, and Bowley had 
never read anything of Hoffman’s or even 
heard of him, though he was quite prepared 
to believe that any young author deserved 
the worst that could be said of him. Friend- 
ship prevailed; Fulford knew that he might 
qualify his praise, but he would at least 
grant the full column that gave the stamp 
of importance; and Dick Jones could be 
trusted, in the cause of humanity, to go the 
whole hog. Neither, moreover, would give 
the show away: Bowley was too proud, and 
Dick too indifferent. Relieved and happy 
at the thought of the sudden glory in that 
death chamber when the loud trumpets of 
the three best known newspaper critics could 
be heard sounding the fame of ‘““The Over- 
world” in the streets, Fulford returned home 
and settled down with the grim intention 
of being hypnotised by the book. He sur- 
rendered to it; that is, he rather acceded to 
the author’s intentions than scrutinised his 


The Painful Dilemma 235 


accomplishment. Even at that it was rather 
slow going, but there was a certain intrinsic 
interest in the curious workings of Hoffman’s 
mind, and his pseudo-titanic visions of hu- 
man existence; and latent always behind the 
obscure and cloudy speculations, the ineffec- 
tively passionate outbursts, the odd and un- 
intentionally obscene passages of ‘“‘stark real- 
ism,’ there was the image of that unquench- 
able spirit in its perishing frame waiting for 
the light to fade in the single bare room. 
He succeeded thus in imputing to the book 
all that he knew of Hoffman’s fineness and 
strength; and, when he began writing the 
pzan he had virtually vowed to publish, he 
almost forgot his difficulties. The nodosities 
of Hoffman’s English really, for the time, 
presented themselves as the “natural result 
of a masterful soul’s struggling with a vast 
intractable mass of material,’? and his ob- 
scurity was next door to a merit in the qual- 
ifying word of the phrase “an immense 
smoky flame.” ‘““The audacities of an intel- 
lect wrestling with the real,” “beautiful clear 
images against a turbulent, almost chaotic, 
background,” “loveliness that is the flower 
of pain,’ “Mr. Hoffman’s magnificent en- 
deavour to record and summarise the conflict- 
ing aspirations of a tortured age’: phrases 
like these passed fluently from Fulford’s 
pen, and he had so far persuaded himself 


236 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


and lost himself in the dedicated task that 
he did not smile when he began a paragraph 
with, “It cannot be denied that the book has 
its Jongueurs.” Having concluded with a 
sentence about “the promise of greatness,” 
he folded the review up. He was afraid 
to look through it again lest he should be 
tempted to tone it down. 

On the morning of publication it ap- 
peared, a downright crashing salutation to 
the genius of Alexander Hoffman. The 
other two fulfilled their promises and Hoff- 
man, in the world which discusses such 
things, became famous in a day. There was 
a rush for “The Overworld” at the libraries. 
A great many people no doubt persuaded 
themselves that they liked it, and a great 
many more that if they didn’t it was because 
it was too deep for them: the agreement of 
the critics was convincing. Fulford received 
at.once a joyful little letter from Mrs. Hoff- 
man, the invalid being too weak to write: 
thank Heaven the news had not at once 
killed him and he could relish his happiness 
before he died. Fulford meant to call but 
did not on each of the immediately succeed- 
ing days; the sort of neglect that may leave 
a lifetime of self-reproach behind it. He 
was then suddenly summoned into the coun- 
try, and it was a full fortnight after the 
momentous day of virtuous log-rolling that 


The Painful Dilemma Bot 


he was walking hurriedly along the Strand 
and encountered a figure that gave him the 
shock a man gets who meets a ghost in broad 
daylight. It was Hoffman’s double, in a 
new navy suit; no, it was Hoffman himself 
who sprang forward with a smile of delight 
on a face that looked healthier than it had 
ever looked before. He was a new man with 
a new kind of confidence. “I began to get 
better at once,” he said. “You saved my 
life’; and, after a profusion of thanks, he 
made Fulford’s heart sink within him by 
saying, “Let me come along with you and 
tell you about my new play.” Fulford had 
to go: he was now pledged for life. 


Vv 


So it was. Bowley might retreat and 
cover his tracks; Dick Jones might forget 
and could not decently be further dragged 
in; but Fulford felt bound now not to be- 
tray the man he had, as it were, induced to 
go on living. And every month that passed 
made it more difficult for him, for it was 
impossible to prevent people finding out the 
worthlessness of an author who gave liter- 
ally nobody either instruction or entertain- 
ment. “People,” one says, but not the whole 
world is meant. On the strength of that one 
resounding chorus Hoffman had got substan- 


238 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


tial offers from England and America for 
his next three books, and a large number of 
periodicals which specialised in the audacious 
and the incomprehensible put him on the 
list of their elect. Sneers at him began ap- 
pearing in certain quarters; to him these 
seemed the natural fruits of jealousy and 
the exhilarating rewards of the pioneer; so 
long as he retained the championship of a 
man like Fulford he had all the aid he 
wanted. 

But Fulford? He could not explain, and 
his prestige consequently suffered. Nothing 
could compensate for his absurd belief in 
the egregious Hoffman, and the austerer 
young were merciless to him. “Say what 
you like,” remarked a hard voice which he 
overheard at a party, “that fellow Fulford 
cannot be any good. Look at the rot he 
talks about that ass Hoffman’s rubbish. He 
must be either corrupt or a fool.” 

It was a heavy burden; but how could 
he turn upon Hoffman and kill him? There 
are dilemmas of which one horn will com- 
pletely vanish and then return more spiky 
and formidable than ever. 


IX: THE MAN WHO WROTE 
FREE VERSE 


I 


as is a very short story. It is hardly 
a story at all. It might even be de- 
scribed as all moral and no story: a lamenta- 
ble thing, but the fit is upon us. 

It was Sunday afternoon; the sky blue, 
the sun hot, the shade cool because of a 
slight breeze. The Manor House, its ancient 
stones mottled yellow and grey, its arched 
oaken door ajar, half its mullioned and 
leaded windows open, slept behind its gently 
sloping lawn. Lady Muriel was presumably 
asleep as well; at any rate she had retired 
to her room after the exhausting chatter of 
lunch. Sir Herbert and his wife, active del- 
egates from a more energetic world, had 
gone out for a walk, though all country 
walks must have been very much alike to 
them, and they would certainly have noth- 
ing to report when they returned except Sir 
Herbert’s hearty and self-evident appetite 
for tea. The two young men who completed 
the party had professed weariness and re- 
sorted to the shadow of the great cedar, 
with the Sunday papers and a large collec- 

239 


240 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


tion of Muriel’s latest books. Adrian Rob- 
erts, bowed beneath the load of a Foreign 
Office clerkship, had taken the hammock; 
Reggie Twyfold, who was burdened only 
by an acute intelligence and enough to live 
on, was comfortable in a deck chair with a 
foot-rest; both were well supported by cush- 
ions in red, blue, green and orange silk. 
Their reading was desultory amid the en- 
chantment of the afternoon. Curving down 
to their right was a concourse of lilacs, 
laburnum, and red hawthorn all in bloom. 
On the left a border, a rockery, the bricks 
of the walled garden, and southward, mak- 
ing an opening through which the woody 
pastoral landscape fell and fell into blue 
distance, two groups of tall elms newly in 
leaf. At intervals a rook drowsily cawed in 
one of them and there was a slight flutter 
of wings; otherwise the birds were silent, 
and an occasional white butterfly in lazy 
erratic flight was the only thing in move- 
ment. 

The church clock struck three; Adrian laid 
his book on his knees, Reggie languidly 
dropped his to the ground. 

“Muriel’s books,” said Reggie, “seem even 
more ridiculous here than they do in town.” 

“Tm reading Trollope,’ replied Adrian 
from his hammock, with the air of one who 
preferred not to waste his time. 


The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 241 


“I confess,” replied Reggie defensively, 
“that I can’t help looking at the stuff.” 

“Some of the bindings are rather engag- 
ing.” 

“No, I mean the insides,” insisted Reggie. 
“T can’t help being curious about them, idi- 
otic though they are. You can’t realise what 
rot all these novels are.” 

“Oh, yes, Ican. They are pretentious and 
psychological, dull and obscene, or cheaply 
cynical. I do occasionally look at one for 
conversational purposes with other people, 
though I dare not admit it to Muriel or she’d 
bore me to death with her arguments.” 

“This one I have here isn’t even punctu- 
ated.” 

“It makes little difference,” said Adrian 
consolingly ; “none of these people can write 
and few of them seem even to want to.” 

“But, really, Adrian, I can’t quite ignore 
it all as you do. It’s the poetry I was 
thinking of most. I confess I can’t make 
head or tail of three-quarters of it, but I 
can’t help thinking I may be wrong. Why 
should they be writing what seems to us 
cacophonous gibberish? It isn’t only Mu- 
riel, you know. Lots of people seem to ad- 
mire it, and it’s happening all over Europe 
and America.” 

“Not really, my dear. We hear a good 
deal about it, and the papers we read seem 


242 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


to think it all ought to be taken seriously. 
In point of fact these creatures are scarcely 
read by each other. It’s a kind of hideous 
little underworld; the sort of thing you see 
when you lift up a large stone and see dis- 
gusting insects, beetles and centipedes, scut- 
tling about. They dislike the daylight too. 
It’s all the most awful nonsense. The sec- 
ond-rate have discovered the trick of incom- 
prehensibility in our own time; the trick of 
bogus audacity has always been known.” 

“I know, that’s what it all seems like to 
me when I read it. Yet when I’m not read- 
ing it I feel that there may be something 
genuine in all this movement .. .” 

“Which?” asked Adrian in an amused 
voice. 

“Oh, the whole of it. The general mix-up. 
All these isms and experiments. Scientific 
and social conceptions can’t alter without 
modifying art; music changes and poetry 
may change; and I conceive new things be- 
ing said in a new way.” 

‘And so can I,” said Adrian. “T really 
don’t mind people saying anything they like 
if they mean it and are competent to express 
themselves. I don’t insist upon rhymes, and 
I don’t, so long as my ear is pleased, mind 
people’s lines being all of different lengths, 
and I don’t mind impressionism if it pro- 
duces effects on me, and I’m not a bit afraid 


The Man Who Wrete Free Verse 243 


of my sub-conscious. But when half-wits, 
or no-wits, invite me to applaud their absurd 
posing and silly illiteracy I see no reason to 
do so.” 

“But don’t you think,” Reggie went on, 
still generously resolute to put a case against 
which all his instincts revolted, “that in some 
way it is all important and symptomatic. 
Doesn’t it seem to you significant that when 
the Bolsheviks got into power in Russia they 
made all the Cubists and things official 
artists?” 

Adrian was unmoved. ‘No,’ he said, 
“I’m sure that highly elaborate nonsense 
means nothing whatever to the proletariat. 
To their leaders it only meant one more 
annoyance to the bourgeoisie; though per- 
haps they naturally felt a kind of affinity 
for the rape of language and the murder 
of ideas.”’ His eyes strayed to the far land- 
scape. ‘The confiscation of the comma,” 
he murmured, as it were for his own benefit. 
Then he recalled himself and began speak- 
ing in more vigorous tones. “Look here, 
Reggie, you yourself could write all this 
bosh on your head.” 

“That’s hardly a compliment, is it, if all 
you say is true?” 

“But, quite seriously, you could and you 
could take them all in. Why not do it, 
Reggie? Start a career as an advanced poet. 


244 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


A small piece of shell in your ribs ought not 
to interfere with that; in fact it might be 
rather a help. Get them all to take you 
seriously and then give it away.” 

“But, Adrian, how could 1? They’d all 
guess. Besides, how would you like to have 
to fraternise with this dreadful rabble and 
be despised by all civilised people?” His 
high voice was querulous. 

Adrian turned his head. ‘“That’s quite 
easy,’ he said. “Take a false name and— 
yes, an accommodation address, I think they 
call it. Be invisible! Refuse to meet any 
one! Bea hopeless invalid! Or disgusting 
to the sight! Why not a leper? A leper 
would do beautifully! It really could be 
quite easily managed. There’s a man I get 
my boots from who would let you use his 
address. He used to be in the Royal Opera 
Arcade, but he’s just moved now to a place 
that looks like a private house, in fact there 
are actually rooms there.” 

Two substantial figures silently appeared 
in the opening between the elms, Sir Her- 
bert, hearty even at that distance, and his 
wife a meet companion. Lady Muriel’s 
voice was heard from an upper window. 
Adrian waved an arm to them and prepared 
to rise. “Do think about it, Reggie,” he 
said. 


The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 245 


II 


Reggie Twyfold sat at his sitting-room 
window in the Albany. He was on the top 
floor: dormers on the eastern side: and he 
looked out on a skyline of slates, chimney- 
stacks, and chimney cowls revolving dizzily 
in a brisk wind. ‘You must begin,” Adrian 
had said, “by emptying your mind com- 
pletely and recording only disconnected im- 
pressions. You can work in the rebellion 
and work out the verbs later.” This ad- 
vice was superfluous; he could have got on 
well enough without it; but it strengthened 
him in his purpose to know that Adrian was 
confident about what he himself had sus- 
pected, and he was resolved now to see the 
imposture through to the bitter—he did not 
guess how bitter—end. He had, in his time, 
written competent verse and prose, but he 
had never sweated such blood trying to write 
sense as he had now sweated trying to write 
nonsense. Two and a half hours of scrib- | 
blings and deletions had left him exhausted: 
and he looked at the fruits of his labours 
with an expression of doubt. “It’s gro- 
tesque,”’ he said, “nobody could print such 
rubbish. It’s inconceivable that there isn’t 
more in it than this.” But Adrian was com- 
ing to luncheon and he had sworn to have 


246 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


a first attempt to show him; and, with a 
groan, he settled down to perfect the experi- 
ment. He was still poising his pen over the 
sheet when Adrian stole in. ‘‘“Well,” he 
said, ‘I see syou've been at, it/) duobster, 
good! Let’s read it while we have lunch.” 

“T don’t think it’s really ready,” protested 
Reggie. 

“But all the better, Reggie,” said Adrian, 
snatching the paper from him. They sat 
down at the table. Adrian absently evis- 
cerated half a lobster while he read the sheet, 
and re-read it. Then “All poetry can best 
be tested by being read aloud,” he said; and 
suited the action to the word. He read it: 


The chimney-cowls 
Gyrate 
In the 
Wind 
There is a blot of ink 
On 
My paper. 
I am going to have lunch 
Before long 
And J am glad there is 
u'e\ 
Lobster. 
“My dear,” said Adrian, as he finished, 
“I congratulate you. This is a most ad- 


The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 247 


mirable beginning. But there are several 
faults in it.” 

“Good Lord, I should think so,” said 
Reggie; “I’ve never written down such dis- 
mal filth in my life.” 

“Oh, I didn’t mean faults in that sense; 
I meant really what you would ordinarily 
call merits.” 

“Y’m damned if I can see them,” said 
Reggie. 

“But they are there all the same,” said 
Adrian, almost paternally. “For one thing 
there is almost a flow to it. For another the 
sentences are quite ordinary. For another 
you actually express, in one place, a genuine 
emotion: I mean when you refer to the lob- 
Ster.) 

Reggie defended himself. ‘One must say 
something,” he argued. 

“Not necessarily. Please remember that 
you are lampooning or, rather, imitating. 
You’ve read far more of these silly poems 
than I have. You know all the kinds of 
them as well as I do. Think of the kinds. 
Use what you have done as raw material 
and develop a poem in each kind from it. 
You must know what I mean. For instance 
there is the very simple kind which consists 
of leaving out everything conjunctive, run- 
ning together a series of objects, and end- 


248 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


ing with an exclamation. You know as 
well as I do what I mean, don’t you?’ 
“Oh, of course,” said Reggie, 


Gyrating cowls. 
Ink. 
Oh God! A Lobster! 


But it would be asinine to think of getting 
any one to print that.” 

“Not as asinine as you suppose. You've 
seen things just like that in books and papers, 
haven’t you? Now put your back into it. 
I’ve got an hour to spare and I shall read 
Matthew Arnold while you show what you 
can do. You know them all quite well. 
Don’t forget the classical one and don’t for- 
get the one which is allowed to rhyme, by 
way of compensation for its especially poly- 
syllabic obscurity. Eat that pear now, and 
proceed with your work.” 

Reggie obeyed. Adrian stretched himself 
on the sofa while the bard, in fitful bursts, 
covered several sheets of paper with writing. 
Now and then he looked up. “You needn’t 
stare at the chimney-pots again,” said Adrian 
on one occasion, “once is quite enough. You 
can make up all you want to know about 
them.” 

Three quarters of an hour elapsed. Reg- 
gie rose with a defiant exclamation. ‘“Well, 


The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 249 


I’ve done them,” he exclaimed, “and if you 
really think these things are at all like their 
originals, all I can say is Lord help some- 
body.” 

“You can read them this time,” said 
Adrian. “T’ll listen and make necessary sug- 
gestions, though I daresay none will be nec- 
essary.” 

Reggie took a deep breath, and began in 
a voice which showed his determination to 
beat down his shame. “This,” he said, “‘is 
one kind that I think you may recognise. 


Chimney cowls 

Cut 

Against sky. 

Inky | 
Excruciating, torturing, abominable 
Lobsters. 

Claws like saws 

Goggle-eyes, pins, tentacles 
Goggle-eyes at goggle-eyes 

Fat men dining at 


Thevkeitzs; 


“Not a bad beginning,” remarked Adrian. 
“T couldn’t tell from your reading, though, 
whether the lines began with capital letters 
or small] ones.” 

“Oh, all small ones,” Reggie assured him, 
“and every other line is to be printed upside- 


250 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


down. ‘Ritz’ is in very large capitals, and 
there is a line of alternate notes of excla- 
mation and interrogation marks at the bot- 
tom. But I couldn’t read those aloud, could 
] 2” 

“No, of course not. What about the 
next?” 
_ “Well, this rhymes; but it is really fear- 
fully obscure: 


Apocalyptic chimney cowls 
Squeak at the sergeant’s velvet hat 
Donkeys and other paper fowls 
Disgorge decretals at the cat. 


The lead archdeacon eats her cheese 
Corrupting their connubial bliss 

And Mary on her six black knees 
Refuses Christopher a kiss. 


Autumnal abscesses relent 
The twilight of ancestral days 

But, smiling at the parsnip’s scent, 
The Nubian girl undoes her stays!” 


“Splendid,” said Adrian. ‘“That is much 
freer. I hope the next one will not rhyme 
though.” 

“It does a bit, I’m afraid,” said Reggie, 
“but so very badly that I don’t think you 
could mark it down a point for it. I’m not 


The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 251 


sure, though, whether it is quite obscure 
enough: 


Jewelled parakeets arise 

Making many a silver noise 

Round the checkered chimney cowls 
Whilst the old Marchesa’s owls 
Blinking in the glaring day 

Flit like fans from far Cathay 
Glittering ink sheds bleak incense 
On the poodle’s stifled sense 

Whilst the crimson-armoured lobster 
Wishes that he was an oyster 
Slipping like a cockatoo 

Through the woods ““Tu-whit, Tu-whoo” 
Through porticoes and pilasters 
Starred with oleanders, asters, 

Prim pagodas, jet, wax-fruits 
Crinolines of Dresden queens 

And indecent salmon-tins 

Darting through . . .” 


“That’s enough,” interrupted Adrian. 
“That’s quite all right. I suppose you get 
the word ‘crystal’ in somewhere?” 

“Yes, of course,” said Reggie, “it comes a 
little later on with the jade and the uni- 
corns. I found that one so easy that I could 
hardly stop.” 

“Put that one aside to be submitted to an 
editor. What is the next?” 


252 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


“Classical,” said Reggie, ‘‘and you are to 
take it that all the proper names are spelt 
with good hard ‘k’s’ and ‘os’s’ instead of 
‘us’s.’ This is how it goes: 


Chimney cowls 
Cut 
Against sky.” 


“But this is the same as the first,’’ Adrian 
broke in. ‘‘You’ve read this one before.” 

“Only the beginning,” said Reggie. 
“This kind begins like the first but then it 
gets different. Besides it isn’t ever printed 
upside down; a few italics instead: 


Chimney cowls 

Cut 

Against sky 

O Phoibos Albanios 
The white limbs 
Of the nymphs 

On Hymettos 

To Pan, the honey 
Acrid 

In the nostrils, 

To, the purple 

Of the vats of Herakles 
On the cliffs 

By Akrokeraunia | 
Hard and bitter 


The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 253 


The shells 
But the flesh 
Ah Zeus! 
Ah good!” 


“Ts that all?” asked Adrian. 

“Yes; isn’t it enough?” 

“Absolutely perfect. But there is one 
kind missing. Except for that line about. 
fat men eating at the Ritz there was noth- 
ing really expressing the spirit of real re- 
volt. You do not do it metaphorically by 
dissolving words as you have dissolved gram- 
mar; you do not do it literally by stating 
your desire to destroy society, to throw in- 
fernal machines at the comfortable, to burn 
libraries and pictures, to abolish education, 
to bombard churches and to tip the Almighty 
off his throne. You do not even wish you 
were a tiger or a motor-car.” 

“Well, hang it all, Adrian,” said Reggie, 
kicking the fender a little peevishly, “TI have 
hardly had time, have I? But I do assure 
you I can do that one even more easily than 
the others. If you find those satisfactory 
this will be as well.” 

“Yes, they’re quite perfect.” 

“Well, I don’t know whether to hope 
you're right or not. Even now I cannot per- 
suade myself that this horrible drivel will 
take anybody in.” 


254 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


“Well, my dear, you’re wrong. I will 
send you a list of papers to which you may 
submit them and the address is all right. 
Now I must be going. The Balkans are 
waiting for me.” He took up his hat, stick, 
and gloves and went out. His leisurely foot- 
step had sounded four times on the stairs 
when Reggie rushed after him. 

“T say, wait a minute,” he called breath- 
lessly, “‘there’s one thing we’ve forgotten. 
What is my name to be? I simply must 
have a convincing one. It would be awful 
to be found out before the time for dis- 
closure comes; nobody would ever believe 
I was leg-pulling.”’ 

Adrian leant with his back to the banis- 
ters, pinched his chin and frowned slightly 
in thought. 

“Ought I to be a woman do you think?” 
suggested Reggie. 

“Wait a minute,” said Adrian; and then, 
“T’ve got it. These made-up names are 
never convincing. I’ve a brilliant idea. 
Nobody has ever dreamed of using his own — 
“mame as a pseudonym.” 

“But, Adrian, it would be absurd to sign 
myself Reginald Twyfold.” 

_ “T wasn’t suggesting it. What you must 
do is to sign yourself Charles Twyfold, or 
Sidney Twyfold, or Ralph Twyfold. John 
always looks false. I think Sidney; nobody 


The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 255 


would ever call himself by a name like Sid- 
ney unless it really was his name.” 

Reggie was still slightly alarmed. ‘““T'wy- 
fold,” he ventured, “‘is such an uncommon 
name. I shall be pestered by people asking 
me if he is a relation.” 

“Yes. And what better disguise could 
you have? Frankly admit, when you have 
to, that he zs a relation. Try to turn the 
subject; but if you are pressed confess to 
a second cousinship. Let it be extracted 
from you that his branch of the family is 
a little detrimental. ‘I think Sidney lives in 
Paris. His father had to flee the country 
and settle in Boulogne, while he himself 
was not exactly sent down from Oxford but 
found it convenient to come down after one 


122 


term.’ Good-bye! 


Ill 


A month passed; a month spent by the 
disreputable Sidney in industrious composi- 
tion and despatch of manuscripts. Reggie, 
who couldn’t help liking Muriel in spite of 
her brainless pretentiousness and was always 
amused by a dive into strange society, was 
lunching at her house in Upper Berkeley 
Street. There was a company of twelve in 
the jazz dining-room: six young men and 
six middle-aged women. The women, at a 


256 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


glance, seemed all to have white faces and 
red hair; the young men had white faces and 
either no hair or too much; tortoiseshell spec- 
tacles were generally worn; voices were 
pitched high; and any little indecency was 
welcomed by titters of appreciation. The 
husbands of the ladies were absent on busi- 
ness or sport; and Art was the principal 
theme of talk. Reggie managed to keep his 
end up with the vivacious dames on either 
side of him. He knew very few of the names 
of the latest and most devastating Franco- 
Brazilian painters, and pornography, owing 
to some strange inhibition, he always shrank 
from discussing in mixed company. But he 
met his companions half way; and now and 
then, when he inadvertently slipped into 
seriousness, sense, or the disclosure of an 
acquaintance with the major artists of the 
past, he delighted them with the surprise of 
a fresh point of view. The time might come, 
he reflected, when they might think morality 
too charming and agree to turn to it for an 
entirely novel sensation. Suddenly across 
the confusion of sights and sounds he was 
aware of Muriel’s long neck and vast stupid 
eyes as it were shouting across a font of 
painted wooden pomegranates. “Reggie,” 
she cried, “you simply must tell me, who 
is Sidney Twyfold. I simply must know 
him.” 


The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 257 


“Why ?” asked Reggie, “if you don’t mind 
saying.” 

“But, dearest Reggie, he writes the most 
marvellous poetry. We’re all simply raving 
about it. Nobody ever heard of him till two 
weeks ago. Didn’t you see his “Mammon 
Fox-Trot” in the—I forget which of the 
papers it was—last week?” | 

“No,” said Reggie, hoping his face was 
not paling as he thought it was. 

“But he must be a relative of yours, isn’t 
he?” 

It was the first rehearsal of what was to 
be Reggie’s programme until everybody knew 
about his vagrant Continental cousin who 
was so averse from personal publicity. “I 
have a distant cousin who I think is called 
Sidney, or else Stanley,” he said bravely, 
“but Pve never even seen him. His family 
live abroad, I believe. I expect it may be 
he.” 

“But why don’t you run him down? He 
is wonderful. You simply must find him 
and bring him in touch with others who are 
doing the same thing.” 

Reggie was evasive. He promised to look 
at the poem, and expressed a conviction that 
cousin Sidney would be sure to turn up un- 
assisted. The exchange of sentences, domi- 
nant. above the surrounding scherzo, gave 
a new direction to the general conversation. 


258 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


Sidney had been printed in five places in the 
last three weeks, and most of those present 
had revelled in his whole product. It was 
agreed that he had not yet found a definite 
direction; but as Bertie Griffin said, that 
was perhaps all the better. Even Cubism 
and Futurism, it was agreed, had been too 
narrow. Sidney. Twyfold comprehended 
these and more: he was at once Electrist, 
Early Victorian, Deliquescent, Sadist, Uni- 
versalist, Psychoanalyst and Communist; 
and he could equal each of the most ad- 
vanced poets on his own ground. Words 
like reality, metaphysics, complex, impres- 
sion, release, significance, dull, sentimental 
and priapic began to swarm in the air like 
swallows preparing for migration. Reggie 
could not help being pleased at having 
caused such a stir. “So much better,” he 
heard a myopic youth say, “than Teddy’s 
‘Convulsions in Blue Flat Minor.’ ” 

Muriel protested: “I thought Teddy’s 
thing delicious.” , 

“No,” said the youth, “that sort of thing 
is rather vewx jeu. People like Twyfold 
have got much farther.” 

Reggie had a lift in Greta Rogers’s car 
as far as Piccadilly Circus. He could not 
help, in the comparatively reasonable atmos- 
phere of a ¢éte-a-téte, asking her whether 
she could explain the “Mammon Fox-Trot’’ 


The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 259 — 


to him, or indeed throw the slightest hint of 
its meaning to him. “Reggie,” she said, “I 
wish you wouldn’t be so obstinate. A// the 
amusing young men are doing it, and they 
must be right.” 

He went down Jermyn Street, turned to 
the left after looking carefully around him, 
and sidled into the bootmaker’s for his post. 
He gathered it up, went back to the Albany 
and locked his door. ‘There were two 
cheques; there was a manuscript rejected, 
as he knew and even hoped it would be, by 
John Fulford to whom he had wickedly sent 
it; there was a solemn letter of fraternity 
from a humourless ass who had written all- 
too-understandable free verse for years and 
was now about to move with the times; there 
_ were three invitations from people he did 
not know and three more from people he did 
know, including Muriel herself; there was a 
request from an emancipated young woman 
for an assignation; and there was a letter 
calling him a disgusting scoundrel addressed 
from one of the Service Clubs and honestly 
signed ““W. H. P. Matthews, Col.” Reggie 
sighed; then he laughed; he would go 
through with it now, and in two years, when 
Adrian gave the word, he would blow the 
whole thing sky-high. 


260 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


IV 


It is impossible here to detail the stages 
by which Sidney Twyfold attained his ulti- 
mate fame. His art developed along various 
paths, and Reggie managed his career with 
great acumen. At-times he wrote poems con- 
sisting entirely of lines like: 


MPSS pout Our Rl she 
Po OL NAVE 


But he knew that after a while even his 
keenest admirers would want rather more 
pabulum than that. He mixed these cun- 
ningly with poems in all the other modes, 
graduated down to quite lucid, if violently 
savage, denunciations of the throne, the 
hearth, and the altar, his views on the need 
for trampling on women being specially pro- 
nounced. He even went farther: at rare 
intervals he dug out some of the old seriously 
pretty poems of his regenerate days and sent 
them to respectable periodicals which had 
previously rejected them. They were always 
printed; his disciples rejoiced that their hero 
could do that sort of traditional thing on 
his head, and the earnest seekers after truth 
argued still more earnestly that the fault, as 
concerned his darker works, must obviously 
lie with the reader and not with the poet. 


The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 261 


As his vogue in all the advanced circles of 
England and America grew, the chase after 
his body became hotter. After a brief and 
risky employment of a district messenger 
with a cab, he had to leave the bootmaker 
(who was glad to get rid of him) and move 
Sidney’s quarters to a friend’s flat in Paris: 
it meant delay with the posts, but compara- 
tive safety was assured unless the French 
Post Office could be tampered with for par- 
ticulars of readdressing. The appearance of 
his collected volume, ‘‘Ourang-Outang,” 
marked an epoch: all the papers had long 
reviews, enthusiastic, hedging or denuncia- 
tory; red political journals began calling 
him the Poet of the Revolution; and an 
offer of £5,000 for the MSS. came from a 
transatlantic bookseller. Reggie was exer- 
cised by this; he would have liked the 
money, but his conscience would not allow 
him to sell a commodity the value of which 
he intended presently to destroy. The book- 
seller, however, was not blind to the adver- 
tising value of his mere offer; he blazoned 
it, and the refusal, abroad, and even the 
most conventional began to think that there 
must be a finely austere artist in this Twy- 
fold who not merely declined all personal 
publicity but had stated that he did not ap- 
prove of the factitious making of money by 
the sale of manuscripts. 


262 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 


The two years were nearly up, and Adrian 
and he were continually dinning on the ways 
and means by which the imposture should 
be revealed to the world. The leader of 
revolt would suddenly throw off his dark 
cloak and step forward as the Laughing King 
of the Imbeciles. How certain it all seemed! 
Yet life is but one vast chain of sleeping 
volcanoes, and this plan also went up in 
an unheralded eruption. 

Reggie had gone to bed early that night 
when the great British Bolshevik Revolu- 
tion broke out. He did not see St. Paul’s 
and Westminster consumed by flames; he 
was not present when the Queen Victoria 
Memorial, that idol and symbol of a hated 
aristocracy, was pulled down by ropes; he 
was still asleep in the most secluded thor- 
oughfare in London, when the morning boat 
for Russia left crowded with refugees bound 
for the safest and most prosperous monarch- 
ist country remaining. ‘The first, in fact, 
that he knew of the change, was the appear- 
ance in his bedroom of three dirty and hirsute 
men with pistols, who announced themselves 
as the heads of the British Soviet, Abramo- 
vitch, Macalister and Evans. Reggie, dazed, 
took some time to pull himself together; but 
when he was at last awake he thought they 
had gone mad, for they clicked to the salute 
and said, in unison, ‘“The Dawn, Comrade.” 


The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 263 


“What?” asked the astonished Reggie. 

“We greet the Poet of the Revolution,” 
chimed the three harsh voices. 

“But,” exclaimed Reggie, with a sudden 
intuition, “you've got the wrong man. You 
must have looked me up in the telephone 
book and got the wrong name. The poet ts 
Sidney Twyfold; I’m Reggie; he’s my 
cousin.” 

Abramovitch spoke. “Zere is,” he said, 
“no further neet for dezeption, gomrade. 
Ve haf spied on you and your letters for a 
year. You haf done your vork; you must 
now haf ze revard.” ‘They led him away. 

As they went down the stairs Reggie heard 
the uproar of a vast multitude cheering in 
those cloisters where no multitude had ever 
been before. Above the din shrill voices 
were calling his own name. He began to 
Suess. 


V 


And so it was. Reggie, after that intoxi- 
cating pageant in Hyde Park where he was 
unveiled to a people which had thrown off 
its chains, became the official Laureate of 
the British Republic. He was allowed one 
room in his old quarters at the Albany, and 
was guarded night and day; for, after all, 
though his sentiments had hitherto been un- 


264 The Grub Street N ights Entertainments 


exceptionable, the bourgeois blood might 
out. It was a tedious job being the Tyrteus 
of the Reds; but so long as he could not be 
understood they were quite satisfied with 
him. All his friends, including Adrian and 
Muriel, were in St. Petersburg (formerly 
Leningrad) earning their living by teaching 
dancing and English, and selling work which 
they described as English Peasant Embroid- 
ery. He was no worse off than they; and 
he had a salary of a million paper pounds 
a day as well asa barrel of beer a year. He 
knew that Adrian would not give him away 
for fear of getting him shot; still, it mattered 
little, for, had the truth about Reggie 
been told, his masters would probably have 
treated it as one more infamous capitalist 
lie. 

He died in the end, poor fellow, of bore- 
dom and intellectual starvation. His funeral 
was attended by half the army and millions 
of the proletariat. He was buried in the 
National Pantheon in Villiers Street, Strand. 


THE END 


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